DPC 2021/2022 EEU Tour 2 Playoffs: Viewership Stats and Results

Against the backdrop of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the prospects for esports in the Eastern European region have become very obscure. Problems also affected one of the most popular disciplines in the former Soviet Union countries — Dota 2. Esports Charts sums up the results of the DPC 2021/2022 EEU League Tour 2, which resumed creakily and immediately got into the middle of a scandal again.

Tournament Results

In early March, a few days after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Valve announced that the Dota Pro Circuit competition between teams from Eastern Europe would be suspended. For several weeks, the company had been discussing with the teams the conditions under which the event could proceed — and at the end of April, it became known that DPC 2021/2022 Tour 2 would be held.

A lot has happened since the event was suspended. In particular, the reigning TI champions from Team Spirit relocated the team and the entire club from Russia to Serbia. But most importantly, the tournament got a new organizer: the American studio Beyond the Summit has replaced the Russian company Epic Esports Events.

Scandal with Pure was the main topic of the tournament

As the tournament was delayed by more than a month, BTS held the event in a truncated format: participants played three slots in the upcoming playoffs major, whereas the two loser teams of the event advanced to the second division. Moreover, like many other TOs, BTS prohibited Virtus.pro to have a team in the tournament under their tag, so gpk and DM rosters had to compete under the name Outsiders.

Due to the long pause, it was almost impossible to predict the outcome of the tournament, and the results were a bit surprising. According to the playoff results, the BetBoom team (ex-Winstrike Team) made it to the majors first, and Team Spirit qualified for the tournament in Stockholm only in the lower bracket. Mind Games won the third slot, and the scandal that broke out helped the team with it.

In the second round of winners bracket, Outsiders defeated Mind Games 2:0, but later on was the team disqualified from the tournament. That happened because of Pure, who drew the odious 'Z' symbol on the mini-map at the end of the first round. BTS discussed possible sanctions with Valve and then decided to ban the team from the tournament.

Shortly after the disqualification, VP announced that it had terminated its contract with Pure. But the organization's troubles did not end there. Soon the coach Boo1k also left the club because of allegedly unsatisfactory results, and today Sergey Glamazda, CEO of the club, left his post.

Tournament Viewership Statistics

The format of DPC 2021/2022 EEU Tour 2 Playoffs was significantly different from other regional leagues. As a result, the event was short on Hours Watched, but the Average Viewers number was almost unaffected.

The event lasted from April 27 to May 2, and the matches were broadcast for 51 hours. In this time, streams amassed over 4.3 million Hours Watched and drew 85K Average Viewers.

Four games between Natus Vincere and other teams are among the most popular matches, and the biggest audience was reached at the game with Team Spirit — over 157.4K Peak Viewers. It should be mentioned that in the Top-5 there is also a game between the reigning TI champions and the winner of the qualifiers, BetBoom.

Despite the fact that the most popular matches were those with NAVI, it wasn't the most popular and watched team of the event. CIS Rejects, with RAMZEs and Fng, dominated by Hours Watched, whereas Team Spirit had the highest number of Average Viewers.

Stats on the teams are available with PRO subscription.

The tournament achieved high viewership statistics largely thanks to the variety of broadcasts. Thus, the official Russian-language Twitch stream from Maincast became the most popular by both Peak Viewers and Hours Watched. In addition to the English-language Twitch stream, a former ESPADA and HellRaisers player Alexander Nix Levin also appeared in the top three broadcasts. It should be noted that Yaroslav NS Kuznetsov and a former NAVI player Ilya ALOHADANCE Korobkin also made it into the Top-5 by Peak Viewers.

DPC 2021/2022 Tour 2 Region Comparison

Despite the truncated format, the Eastern European division took second place among all regions both by Hours Watched and Peak Viewers. Western Europe is in the lead: DPC WEU accumulated 60% more HW, and the Peak Viewers number was 17% higher.

DPC 2021/2022 EEU Comparison

Of all the tournaments for Eastern Europe in DPC 2021/2022 EEU, the last event drew the lowest Peak Viewers number. At the same time, it did not fall far behind the Tour 1 thanks to a rather high number of Average Viewers.

***

Despite many problems, the DPC league in Eastern Europe has resumed. However, this does not give much hope: unfortunately, due to the extremely tense relations between Russia and Ukraine, the future of competitive Dota in the CIS looks far from cloudless. The big question is how the DPC season will conclude in Eastern Europe: we can only hope that Dota fans will not be cut off from the game' s esports ecosystem.