The Dota 2 season is picking up steam — recently, BLAST Slam II wrapped up in Denmark with a prize pool of $1,000,000, with ten top teams from around the world battling it out. The second event in BLAST’s new tournament series proved to be more popular than Slam I, setting a new viewership record for the series.
2nd big win for Tundra Esports in 2025
BLAST Slam II featured ten invited teams from different regions. However, not all the favorites got invites — for example, Team Spirit, the two-time International champion, didn’t receive one. There were also no teams from North or South America. The main favorites for Slam II were European teams — Tundra Esports and Gaimin Gladiators — and these two teams ultimately made it to the Grand Final. In the decisive match, Tundra Esports defeated Gaimin Gladiators 3-0 to take the win.
A major factor in Tundra Esports' victory was Anton ‘’dyrachyo’’ Shkredov, the former carry for Gaimin Gladiators, who joined Tundra at the end of 2024. Interestingly, while dyrachyo was still with Gaimin Gladiators, his team often got the better of Tundra. After a several-month break from playing, Tundra won six straight series against Gaimin Gladiators, and at BLAST Slam II, they picked up their seventh win — now with dyrachyo on their roster. BLAST Slam II marked Tundra Esports' second victory in 2025 with dyrachyo, after they previously took home the win at FISSURE Playground #1 in Belgrade, where they also competed for a $1,000,000 prize pool.
BLAST Slam II viewership statistics and trends
The total airtime for BLAST Slam II was shorter than the first tournament in the series, but total Hours Watched saw an 11.8% increase. The number of viewers also rose significantly — the Average Viewers grew by 31%, and the Peak Viewers spiked by 38.7% compared to the first event. Nearly all major broadcast languages saw growth, including Russian, English, Spanish, and Tagalog. However, the audience for Portuguese and Thai streams dipped slightly, but this had minimal impact on the overall tournament statistics.
BLAST Slam II Viewership Statistics and Dynamics
The most-popular match of BLAST Slam II was the Grand Final between Tundra Esports and Gaimin Gladiators, with 277,487 viewers tuning in to watch the series live. The peak of viewer activity came during the second map of the final, which turned out to be the longest and most intense.
The top three most popular matches of the tournament also included two games featuring Nigma Galaxy against PARI and Tundra, each drawing over 200,000 viewers at their peak. However, these games still fell far behind the Grand Final in terms of viewership.
The most popular channels during the tournament were the official relog_pari_dota_ru and blastdota channels. Among the community casters, Roman “mokrivskyi” Mokrivsky and Andrey “afoninje” Afonin drew the largest audiences. Afoninje, in particular, set a new viewership record for his channel during the tournament.
The Dota 2 esports scene is growing at an impressive pace — by 2025, at least 14 tournaments with prize pools of $1,000,000 or more are already set to take place. That's double the number of big events compared to 2024, and the count could keep climbing. This kind of growth and long-term event planning not only builds confidence among pro players and teams, but it also draws in potential sponsors.
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