Clash Royale League World Finals 2021 — more money but fewer viewers
The international championship in the mobile game Clash Royale was held from 3 to 5 December. Supercell raffled off $1M between 32 players. By the way, this is a record amount for the discipline, since last year the prize fund merely amounted to $380K.
In the new article, Esports Charts will provide an overview of the event’s audience statistics, popular players, and also draw a parallel with the recent Brawl Stars World Championship – which is another popular game from the publisher.
For the first time in the history of the discipline, Clash Royale League World Finals 2021 took place entirely online. Earlier events were held in the USA, China, and Japan. The main change for the competition was that the discipline is holding fewer team battle events and is shifting towards the one-on-one format.
In the first stage, 32 players were paired up, playing best-of-3 matches to determine the participants in the playoffs. The 16 remaining players fought in a double-elimination bracket with matches up to two wins.
The audience of the tournament was rather wide and diverse due to a large number of broadcasts in both European and Asian languages. In terms of Hours Watched, English is in the lead, amounting to 43% of the total. Japanese holds the second spot with 19%, and closing the top 3 is German with 14%.
Clash Royale League World Finals 2021 aired on three platforms — YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. Google’s platform is leading in terms of Hours Watched and Peak Viewers. Out of three platforms, YT is where the mobile esports audience is usually most active. Most viewers watched the championship on the Clash Royale Europe YouTube channel – with up to 24K Peak Viewers following the final.
The Japanese player Mugi became the winner, and he was also one of the few who did not represent any esports team. Egyptian finalist Mohamed Light played for Baguettes Esports. Also taking part were the players from organizations known for their success in classic esports: Team Liquid, SK Gaming, Nova Esports, and Tribe Gaming.
The tournament’s final match between Mugi and Mohamed Light gathered 106K Peak Viewers. Mohamed Light became the leader in terms of Hours Watched, and the matches with his participation collected 170K Hours Watched. However, leading by Average Viewers are not the tournament’s finalists but 5k Morten from Germany with 83K Average Viewers, who was only ranked fifth in the championship itself.
The audience of Clash Royale keeps leaving
World Finals 2021 showed the all-time worst result in the discipline in terms of Peak Viewers. It is noticeable that the figure keeps dropping as the years go by, despite the growth of the prize fund from 380K to 1M in just one year. There was a strong decline in popularity after 2018, with the threefold drop of the Peak Viewers indicator in 2019. Although no longer as sharp, this decline continues for the last three years. Compared to 2020, the Peak Viewers and Hours Watched indicator of World Finals 2021 have decreased by 5% and 23%, respectively.
Clash Royale is one of the oldest modern online mobile games, which has been around for five years already. During this time, many other titles were released in more relevant genres (MOBA and battle royale), overtaking its audience.
When comparing Clash Royale with Brawl Stars, another discipline from Supercell, and the second one is in much better shape. This year, the World Championship in Brawl Stars was held in LAN format, and it overtook the Clash Royale World Finals by 62% in terms of Peak Viewers.
In 2020, Clash Royale entered the top 5 games of the year – but the game may well fall out of the ranking this year due to the lack of viewership. That’s something we will inform you about in the nearest results of the outgoing year. For now, subscribe to our social networks to avoid missing statistics on the best titles, streamers, and tournaments.
Detailed Esports data at your fingertips.
Subscribe to & start exploring!
