ESL Pro League Season 18 became the third most popular event of the series

Loading

On October 1, the ESL Pro League Season 18 ended in Malta. The last international CS:GO tournament from ESL attracted over 567,000 Peak Viewers. It was one of the best results for the series, but the event didn’t manage to break the record set in 2021 at ESL Pro League Season 14.

A total of 32 teams participated in ESL Pro League Season 18, including invited participants, winners of regional qualifications, and winners of intermediate qualifying tournaments. Most of the top teams smoothly reached the playoff stage, but still, there were a few surprises in the group stage. For example, the early eliminations of Heroic, Team Liquid, and Cloud9: the first lost to Monte in the decisive group stage match, and the other two teams unexpectedly lost to the Eternal Fire.

In the grand final match, MOUZ defeated Natus Vincere with a score of 3:0. The victory brought MOUZ not only $200,000 but also quotas for IEM Katowice 2024 and BLAST World Final 2023. This is the biggest win for MOUZ since 2019; one should also remember that team replaced two players — including the captain — this summer.

ESL Pro League Season 18 Viewership Statistics

ESL Pro League Season 18 matches totaled 28M Hours Watched and 114.7K Average Viewers. The most popular match of the tournament was the grand final between NAVI and MOUZ, it reached 567.5K Peak Viewers. Moreover, this series received 74% more Peak Viewers than the semi-final.

MOUZ was the most-watched team of the event as it has played more series than any other roster. It’s interesting that the top 5 by the metric included a team that didn’t even reach the playoffs (try to guess who!). NAVI, as usual, became the leader by average viewers; the only team to amass over 200K concurrent viewers on average.

Most popular teams on ESL Pro League Season 18 by Average Viewers

The final of the tournament showed anomalous statistics on peak viewers. We previously predicted this number and were even very close to the final result, but the teams were still able to pull even bigger numbers. It is important to note that the high peak viewership during the grand final was influenced by several factors that cannot be calculated mathematically.

Firstly, this was the first big grand final for Natus Vincere with an international roster and a new captain. After the club made radical roster changes in the summer, many NAVI fans feared that it would be difficult for the team to continue to show good play and achieve high results. This made additional intrigue before the finale. 

The second important factor is the multinationality of the participants in the grand final. If you look at the lineups of MOUZ and NAVI, you can count representatives from eight different countries. Thanks to such a diverse composition of finalists, during ESL Pro League Season 18 grand final an increase in viewers was noticed on Hungarian, Finnish, Romanian, Ukrainian, and other broadcasts that are not among the main languages of the discipline.

The main broadcast channels showed an increase in the number of viewers on the final day. Some of them attracted twice as many viewers as during the quarter-finals or semi-finals.

Comparison of ESL Pro League Season 18 with other tournaments

Most popular ESL Pro League Tournaments

ESL Pro League Season 18 bested the result of Season 17 and became the third tournament in the series by Peak Viewers. The best concurrent viewership of the series was reached during ESL Pro League Season 14; it was watched by up to 758.5K Peak Viewers. 

On the other hand, it is important to note the drop in total Hours Watched and the Average Viewers at matches. Compared to the 17th season, these parameters decreased by 16% and 10%, respectively.

Most popular Counter-Strike Tournaments in 2023

Talking about other events, ESL Pro League Season 18 became the fourth-highest event by Peak Viewers among all CS:GO tournaments in 2023. It lost only to BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, IEM Cologne 2023, and IEM Katowice 2023. 

In 2024, ESL will hold two events in the series — ESL Pro League Season 19 in April-May and ESL Pro League Season 20 in September. The venue, format, and number of participants will remain unchanged. Only the version of the game will change (from CS:GO to Counter-Strike 2), and the prize pool will also decrease slightly (from $850K to $750K). It is difficult to say how much this will affect the number of viewers of the event, but it is likely that the transition to a new version of the game will add intrigue for viewers because all teams will be on equal terms.