EA Sports Cup sets the bar high for competitive FIFA tournaments in 2023
The EA Sports Cup has come to an end, with the tournament final being played on the 18th of January. EA Sports Cup gathered twenty of the best FIFA duos in the world in London, to battle for $250K and two spots in the upcoming FIFAe Club World Cup 2023, the season's most prestigious event. Legendary players such as Tekkz, Msdossary, and tuga810, participated in the event, gifting fans with some amazing moments.
It was a very exciting tournament, full of entertaining matches that left fans glued to their screens. In the playoffs, the quality of the matches only went up, with teams giving their all to reach the grand final. Fnatic and TG.NIP reached the grand final, with Fnatic being the big favorite after their dominating performances in the playoffs stage.
Despite Fnatic going up 1-0, TG.NIP remained calm and collected, putting on display all their skill and chemistry, as they managed to come back in the first game, winning it 3-1. After that, they did not concede any more goals, winning 2-0 in the second leg, and lifting the trophy. 
When it comes to viewership, the EA Sports Cup was able to achieve great results, and reached a wide audience. Viewers wanted to see highly competitive FIFA matches, and that was exactly what the tournament provided. The fact that drops were enabled on every stream of the competition captivated even more viewers, and played an important role in the viewership numbers the event achieved. Fans watched the competition for 1.9 million hours, with 62K viewers tuning in regularly to watch the best players in the world fight for the trophy.
The most popular match of the event gathered 134K simultaneous viewers. It was the match between FUTWIZ and Guild Esports, and was a crucial game to see who would advance to the playoffs. Curiously, none of the playoff matches made it to the top five. Not even the grand final, which is the most important game of the tournament, and normally captivates plenty of viewers, was able to make the list.
Twitch was the viewers' place of choice to watch the event, reaching 117K PV, with the majority of viewers choosing the official EA Sports Twitch channel to watch the competition. The only other platform that broadcasted the EA Sports Cup was YouTube, which reached a much smaller audience, with 20K PV. English was by far the most popular language, with 134K simultaneous viewers. The remaining languages didn't even reach 1K PV.
The EA Sports Cup became the second most popular FIFA event of 2022, only behind the FIFA eWorld Cup 2022, which had 149K PV. It was able to attract more viewers than the Eligella Content Creator Cup 1 and 2, which gathered some of the most popular creators in the game, and reached a wide audience, despite only being broadcasted for four hours.
This further proves how successful the event was. Despite that, we expected the playoffs stage to reach a wider audience, and have some of the most popular games of the event, something that did not happen. However, it's remarkable that the tournament was able to captivate more viewers than the FIFAe Nations Cup 2022, or most of the creators' events, which were more popular than the majority of the competitive tournaments in 2022.
The EA Sports Cup was able to reach a wide audience, attracting viewers from all over the globe, and was also able to captivate the interest of many viewers that had stopped following the FIFA competitive scene. Because of that, it’s safe to say the EA Sports Cup revitalized the FIFA esports scene, and showed there is a bright future ahead.
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