Russian viewers ensure DreamLeague Season 25 is series' most popular event in six years
The DreamLeague Season 25 was the first event of the long-standing Dota 2 series in 2025. Boasting top-tier action and some of the game's best teams battling it out for a $1 million prize pool, it ended as the series' most popular event in six years.
The first event of the newest DreamLeague season concluded with Team Spirit beating the in-form Tundra Esports 3-2 in a Grand Final played over multiple days. This was also the most popular match at the competition with 416,166 Peak Viewers (PV), making it the best result for the series since 2019's DreamLeague Season 11.
There was controversy surrounding this match as well, with an alleged DDoS attack from hackers during game four disrupting the competition. After Team Spirit’s players were logged out and unable to reconnect on time, the organizers eventually decided to postpone the series to March 4.
The Russian side, 2-1 up and on the verge of winning the whole thing, kept its cool to complete the win two days later. As a result, Team Spirit took home a total purse of $290,000 and 4,620 ESL Pro Tour (EPT) points, while Tundra Esports pocketed $130,000 and 3,920 EPT points.
ESL Pro Tour points are awarded to teams based on their ranking at every EPT event they participate in, also acting as a determining factor for direct invites to these competitions. The circuit, now in its third season, covers DreamLeague and ESL tournaments, with EPT points awarded to sides so that the pathway to big-ticket championships like the Esports World Cup is as transparent and straightforward as possible.
Team Spirit's success played a major part in this Dota 2 event's viewership peak reaching a six-year high. Having gone ten months without a tournament win and struggling in early 2025, the side turned things around in this online competition to take a step closer to securing a direct invite to the Riyadh Masters 2025, part of the Esports World Cup 2025.
The substantial interest in Team Spirit's matches was also seen in the fact that it appeared in all five of the most popular matches list. Two games each against Tundra Esports and fellow Russian side PARIVISION were part of this table, making the popular side's eventual success a crucial factor in driving up the event's overall viewership.
Team Spirit's triumph also meant that Russian viewers showed a lot more interest in the action, especially towards the latter stages of the tournament as they supported their team. In fact, the language reached a new DreamLeague series record with over 244,000 Peak Viewers, marking just the second time it crossed the 200,000 peak concurrent viewers barrier.
The language also touched the 10 million Hours Watched (HW) mark at a DreamLeague event for the first time. What also helped was the interest shown by Russian co-casters like Roman "ramzes" Kushnarev and Yaroslav "just_ns" Kuznetsov, who, alongside the official channels, ended up amongst the most successful channels to cover the matches.
As mentioned above, the DreamLeague Season 25 hit the highest series peak since 2019, making it just the third event to cross the 400,000 PV barrier. It also notched over 23.8 million Hours Watched over an airtime of 167 hours, putting it in the second spot for DreamLeague competitions in terms of watch time, with only Season 22 posting higher HW numbers.
What was also worthy of note was the Group Stage 2 exit of Team Falcons, a side that had won the previous three DreamLeague editions. In fact, the last five events in the series have been won by either the above Saudi Arabian esports organisation or Team Spirit.
Looking at Dota 2 competitions this year, the DreamLeague Season 25 is by a distance the most popular so far. It is also the only one to pass the 20 million Hours Watched mark.
The DreamLeague Season 25 has continued the good start to the year for Dota 2's esports scene. There are a lot of big tournaments to come, including the spectacle that is the Esports World Cup over the summer, so there is every chance that these viewership numbers will continue to remain solid as more viewers tune in to check out the action.
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