Showmatch with football legends and the Argentine derby in the final — eChampions League 2022 overview
The day before the 2022 UEFA Champions League Final, Sweden hosted the eChampions League 2022 Finals (the virtual counterpart of the tournament held in FIFA game series). It featured stars from all over the world, including past champions and winners of different leagues, such as Tekkz and Bonanno. World-famous football legends were invited and participated in the event’s showmatch. And what's more important, the event itself became the most watched one among e-football tournaments this year.
Tournament results
The eChampions League is one of the largest e-football leagues. 1025 players took part in the group stage, which took place in February, of which 64 participants advanced to the next stage. The Knockout Stage, which began on March 23, served to determine the eight best players of the tournament, which advanced to the finals. The 2021 and 2020 league finals were held online due to the coronavirus. And so it was for the first time in two years that the finals were held in a LAN format at the Space Arena in Stockholm. The prize fund amounted to $280K.
The winner of the tournament was the Argentine player Nicolas 'nicolas99fc' Villalba from the Guild Esport club. In a thrilling match series versus his compatriot and the Team Heretics representative Matias 'Matias' Bonanno, Nicolas made a comeback from losing the first match with a 1:3 score, and then crushed his opponent with the score of 7:2 in the second match, thus taking home the eChampions cup along with $75K.
Viewership statistics
The tournament amassed 265K Hours Watched over 8 hours of broadcasting. The most popular match was the final between nicolas99fc and Matias, with more than 69K Peak Viewers being eager to see the eventual fate of the champion title.
The showmatch, in which football stars (among them Ashley Cole, Kaka, Henrik Larsson, and Fernando Morientes) teamed up with the four finalists of the competition, also turned out to be extremely popular. This game event attracted 54K Peak Viewers.
Occupying the 3rd-4th spots were the matches of the e-football legend and the winner of the eChampions League 2020 Invitational — Tekkz. His encounters with nicolas99fc and Matias in the finals of the upper and lower brackets gathered 31K and 29K Peak Viewers respectively. Closing the top 5 was the match of the Israeli player Roee Feldmann against Matias, watched by 26K Peak Viewers.
Most popular FIFA events by PV & AV in 2022
EChampions League 2022 Finals became the most popular e-football championship in 2022 (excluding streamer events). In terms of Peak Viewers, it was ahead of FIFA 22 Global Series Team of the Season Cup, which reached the mark of 56K Peak Viewers (22% fewer than that of ECL finals). A similar situation was observed with Average Viewers. The 2022 eChampions League Finals attracted 33K Average Viewers, which was 32% more than the Group Stage and 46% more than the Knockout Stage of the same competition.
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The fans of e-football will get to enjoy the FIFA eNations Series 2022 playoffs in four regions in June, while the FIFA eNations Cup 2022 will take place in Copenhagen at the end of July. Closing the esports season at the end of this year will be the FIFA eWorld Cup 2022.
The next season will revolve around the new version of the game, FIFA 2023, which will be the last joint product of FIFA and EA. The cooperation between the International Football Federation and the game developer company, which lasted more than 20 years, will come to a close at the end of this year. EA will release the further football simulator titles under the name EA Sports FC.
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