BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 becomes most popular event in series in two years

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The BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 ended on May 26 after ten days of intense action at the Bowlers Exhibition Centre in Manchester. It was the most popular Rainbow 6 Major in almost two years and the number-one event by peak concurrent viewers this year when not counting Six Invitational or streamer competitions.

Twenty of the world's best teams battled it out over three phases for a total prize pool of $750,000 at this Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege tournament. The winner received $217,000 and the runner-up $92,000, with the number of Six Invitational Global Points Standings the more important task at hand as it aided teams in their quest to reach the season-ending world championship.

  BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 – most popular matches and basic viewership stats   

At the end of it all, Beastcoast edged past Team BDS 3:2 in a thrilling Grand Final to emerge as the champion, with the encounter registering 162K Peak Viewers. The win included a comeback from 1:2 down after taking the first game of the series, giving fans their money's worth with some of the most riveting action seen in the event.

The BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 winner was also the side with the most appearances on the table of most popular games, with three. The other sides with multiple entries were Team BDS and Team Liquid, both highly followed among audiences of the game. Their top-notch performances also helped this event record 5.1M Hours Watched and 65.6K Average Viewers over an airtime of 78 hours.

Sticking with teams, it was a tough fight between two names for the tag of the most popular side, with the winner edging ahead by around a thousand viewers. Interestingly, one esports organization made the top five despite getting knocked out in Phase 1, showing that brand value built over time thanks to success on and off the arena can attract large and loyal audiences no matter the level of performance.

Interestingly, both prominent languages — English and Portuguese — saw spikes in their numbers compared to the previous Major in Atlanta. Of special significance is the jump in the latter's figures despite a top-three finish for Brazilian sides at the competition held in the United States.

That can be attributed to the presence of highly sought-after organizations like FURIA Esports and Team Liquid, who tend to attract far larger audiences than their compatriots. With both teams also making it all the way to Phase 3, Portuguese-speaking fans from around the world were glued to their screens to see if one of their favorite sides could lift the cup and maintain the region's dominance from 2023.

  Most popular Rainbow 6 events outside the Six Invitational series   

Coming to comparisons, the Manchester Major ended as the third-most-popular event in Rainbow 6 this year, behind the Six Invitational 2024 and the Jynxzi x Rainbow Six Siege: 1v1 Brawl on Twitch Rivals. The former remains the number one competition in the discipline by peak concurrent viewers, with English and Portuguese broadcasts playing a big role in this success as well.

What is also worth pointing out is that the number of channels co-streaming this event was lesser than the Atlanta Major, but that didn't stop it from putting up some impressive numbers. One name that deserves mention is zigueira, the Team Liquid content creator whose live streams played a big part in pushing Portuguese to the kind of improvements it eventually showed.

  Most watched Rainbow 6 events outside the Six Invitational series   

The BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 was also the most popular Major since the Six Berlin Major 2022, which peaked at 179K concurrent spectators. In fact, only two other Majors are higher — the Six Major Raleigh 2019 and the Six Major Paris 2018 — tournaments that were held during the game's competitive heyday.

Event the watch time, thanks to the tweaked format, saw a significant enough rise to place this event among the top names on a leaderboard that does not include world championships.

As also mentioned during our analysis of Phase 1 of the Manchester Major, the tweaked format has played a part in the concentration of its viewership, helping continue the momentum gained at the record-breaking Six Invitational 2024. Whether it can sustain this run through the year remains to be seen, but things are undoubtedly looking up for one of the most prominent esports shooter disciplines today.