Sluggish Start of ESL One Stockholm 2022 and Stats of Day 1

ESL One Stockholm 2022, a Dota 2 Major, kicked off on May 12. It was the first DPC event of the current competitive season. The long wait for the discipline's first international event in 2022 was overshadowed by many issues: not all of the top players and teams attended the tournament, which had a direct impact on viewership numbers. Esports Charts presents the results of Day 1 and compares the viewership statistics with the previous tournament in the series.

The Dota Pro Circuit 2021/2022 season is certainly one of the most problematic in Dota history. The first Major of the series failed, the league in Eastern Europe was close to being shut down and ESL One Stockholm 2022 faced a lot of difficulties long before it started.

OG did not make it to Stockholm with full roster. Photo by ESL

This event is the first in the series that will not feature a single team from China, which is usually one of the strongest regions in the discipline. Due to the challenging situation with the coronavirus, Chinese teams could not leave the country: whereas Royal Never Give Up can play remotely in MSI (the event takes place in neighboring South Korea), it is simply impossible to do the same in a Swedish tournament. Thus, fans will not see PSG.LGD, Team Aster and Royal Never Give Up competing against western teams.

Players from Eastern Europe, especially the Russians and Ukrainians have problems as well. In particular, OG could not register Misha and coach Chuvash for the tournament (their places were taken by Ceb and n0tail), and Mind Games had to ask for help from the stand-ins, as Bignum and Slayer had to skip the event. Moreover, Mind Games may not play in the tournament at all: the team still hasn't reached Sweden and has already got the first technical defeat.

However, the tournament has started, and that's the most important thing. Almost all teams played two matches on Day 1, and OG and Thunder Awaken took the lead in their respective groups. Unexpectedly, Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid ended up among the underdogs. It's too early to pay much attention to the results: we have three match-days ahead, and the situation will surely change a lot of times.

Day 1 Viewership Statistics

The format of the tournament has changed quite a lot compared with the previous Major. There is no Wild Card stage anymore, and all participants of the tournament play in the group stage, so there were three (!) matches at the same time. However, this didn't help the tournament to attract many viewers.

The tournament accumulated more than 2.8 million Hours Watched in 11.5 hours of airtime, and drew 253K Average Viewers. Day 1 had a Peak Viewers number of only 370.5K spectators, and OG vs. BOOM Esports became the most popular encounter, reaching 196K Peak Viewers. However, this is only a few hundred more people than the Team Spirit vs. Fnatic match attracted.

Twitch remained the most popular broadcasting platform, drawing 258K Peak Viewers. YouTube ranks second, showing four times fewer viewers.

English became the main language of broadcasts, as it had 150K Peak Viewers. Russian broadcasts attracted only 5 thousand fewer viewers, and Spanish rounds out the Top-3 with 49K Peak Viewers.

Compared to WePlay AniMajor held about a year ago, Day 1 of the Stockholm event dropped in all core metrics. Hours Watched number has the smallest drop (-1%), while Average Viewers number decreased by 11%, with the Peak Viewers number dropping by as much as 15%.

The drop in viewership metrics is not surprising. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, it should be noted that many famous and extremely popular teams from Europe and the CIS did not attend the tournament. In particular, Team Secret, Nigma Galaxy и Natus Vincere, that regularly gather a large audience at their matches, didn't qualify for the event.