ESL Impact League Season 6 suffers from overlap in tournament schedule with Shanghai Major RMRs

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ESL Impact League Season 6 came to its conclusion on November 24. The ESL Impact League series is the premiere female esports circuits in Counter-Strike, but the recent Season 6 received its lowest viewership in two years. This came about due to a multitude of factors, such as an overlap of tournament schedules and lack of co-streamers for the tournament. 

In mid-2022, the inaugural season of ESL Impact became the most popular female Counter-Strike esports tournament. Although the series has reached such impressive heights, viewership for the series has been volatile over the years. Ultimately, these female esports events in Counter-Strike rely heavily on co-streamers and community casters bringing the tournaments to a wider audience, which Season 6 was lacking.

The lack of co-streamers at the tournament largely came down to the event schedule overlapping with the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024: European RMR B. The qualification tournament for the upcoming Chinese Major received 532K Peak Viewers, a new record for CS RMRs, and about 59% of its total watch time came from co-streamers. These co-streamers included Brazilian caster Gaules, who previously was the official Portuguese-language stream for ESL Impact events. Gaules is one of many co-streamers who preferred to cover the Major qualification instead of the female esports event.

In total, Season 6 of the ESL Impact series received 136.8K Hours Watched, and maintained an average viewership of 4.4K concurrent viewers. The event reached its peak viewership during the grand final, which saw Brazilian organizations FURIA Esports Female and Imperial Valkyries fight it out for the championship. The match received 15.5K Peak Viewers, ended with Imperial taking a decisive 2-1 victory and the championship. 

Imperial returned to women’s Counter-Strike by signing an already established roster earlier this year. Since their reentry to the scene in May this year, their team have already claimed two ESL Impact League championships. 

Historically, Brazilian teams have been the highlight of the ESL Impact League series. FURIA’s female roster in particular has usually been significantly more popular than its peers, and brought a significant Portuguese-speaking audience to these events. While FURIA and Imperial’s female teams were still noticeably popular at the event, they were unable to draw the high viewership they have enjoyed in the past.

  Viewership for ESL Impact League events is volatile due to reliance on co-streamers   

Viewership for ESL Impact League tournaments have always been hard to predict. The inaugural season was massively popular, thanks to co-casting from Gaules, as well as a boost to esports viewership at the tail-end of the COVID lockdowns. Following seasons, such as the third and fourth season, managed to reach tens of thousands of viewers thanks to co-streaming. During Season 4, Gaules was responsible for over 60% of the tournament’s total viewership.

The low viewership for the recent season can be largely attributed to the unfortunate overlap in tournament scheduling. While ESL are critical to the female esports scene in Counter-Strike, they have no control over when other official events for Counter-Strike are scheduled. The overlap in schedule between the Season 6 finals and the Chinese Major RMR is no fault of ESL’s, but is still the foremost reason for the low viewership.

Compare the recent season of ESL Impact to a similar event in a similar game: Valorant’s VCT 2024: Game Changers Championship. The format of the VCT season means the GC Championship is undoubtedly higher stakes than a regular season of the ESL Impact League, but nevertheless, the stark difference in viewership comes down to how the Game Changers Championship is run and organized by the game’s developers Riot Games.

The VCT 2024: Game Changers Championship is the Goliath to the David of the ESL Impact League. The Counter-Strike event received 97.8% fewer Hours Watched, and roughly the same significant decrease in both average and peak concurrent viewers. 

The success of the Game Changers series in Valorant can be attributed to Riot Games organizing the championship themselves, scheduling the final event months after the main Valorant Champions 2024 tournament, and Riot bringing on various popular streamers and personalities from Valorant to support the event officially. 

Co-casters at the Game Changers Championship accounted for a majority of the tournament’s total viewership, thanks to Riot Games invitation to leading co-streamers like Kyedae to host in-person watch parties at the event. The event’s scheduling also attracted attention from many other co-streamers, who had nothing else to focus on in regard to Valorant esports during the event. 

Giving female esports room to breathe and removing potential competition from within the same esports title is crucial for achieving high viewership. Riot Games smartly placed the Game Changers 2024 Championship deep into their regular VCT off-season, letting fans get excited about the event and tuning in to get their Valorant fix. Riot’s scheduling of the event and their official integration of co-streamers are what made the Game Changers 2024 Championship the most popular female/inclusive esports event of the year.

While ESL have been crucial in developing the female scene for CS, Valorant has proven that an officially organized and planned female event endorsed by Valve would likely reach much higher viewership. By having female/inclusive Valorant esports organized by the game developers themselves, Riot Games are able to take complete control of the entire Valorant esports schedule, and also spare the budget to integrate co-streamers.