Esports World Cup 2025 sets new language records for Counter-Strike esports as The MongolZ claim world title

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The Esports World Cup 2025 Counter-Strike event was a highlight of this year’s summer gaming festival. The finals took place on the last day of EWC, marking an explosive end to the seven weeks of tournaments. The Counter-Strike 2 event received strong viewership increases compared to last year, and also set various language records for the game’s viewership history. Esports Charts dives into the viewership statistics of this final EWC fixture. 

Starting on August 20, the Esports World Cup took a slightly different format than other top events for the tactical shooter title. The EWC 2025 kicked off with a single-elimination bracket of best-of-three matches, whittling down the 16 competitors to a final two for the best-of-five finals. While diving straight into a single-elimination bracket with no preceding group stage is atypical for Counter-Strike esports, the event’s punchy, explosive format generated high average concurrent viewers throughout.

In total, the Esports World Cup 2025 Counter-Strike generated over 14.4M Hours Watched (HW) while maintaining over 350,000 Average Viewers (AV), both marking significant increases of 40 and 47.6% compared to last year, respectively. The significant growth in viewership for the EWC highlights its growing place within the Counter-Strike industry, and also reflects the benefit from setting the game as the ultimate event-closer: at the EWC 2024, the Counter-Strike event took place far earlier in the calendar, only a few weeks in.

The single-elimination format of the tournament undoubtedly led to some unexpected upsets: NAVI were eliminated by 3DMAX in the opening round and, similarly, Team Spirit, FaZe Clan, and G2 Esports were also all knocked out in their first matches. With many potential favorites eliminated, the ultimate grand finals of the tournament was a showdown between The MongolZ and Aurora Gaming. 

While the Peak Viewers (PV) of the EWC 2025 remained only stable compared to last year, the EWC 2024 featured more internationally popular names. At last year’s event, NAVI and G2 Esports battled it out in the finals, and the 2025 iteration was almost able to match its viewership, despite featuring teams with less global appeal. 

The Mongolian team are local heroes in their home country and for their Esports World Cup 2025 championship a record-breaking amount of Mongolian viewers tuned in, including including their own Prime Minister. Just shy of 180,000 Mongolian-speaking viewers tuned in to the finals as The MongolZ clinched their world title, or roughly 5.1% of the total Mongolian population. This viewership was largely consolidated on Meta, a Mongolian esports broadcaster, which set a personal viewership record for the match. 

On top of this, both Arabic and Korean viewership set new Counter-Strike Peak Viewers records during the Esports World Cup 2025 with 27,091 and 14,377 PV, respectively. Saudi Arabian organization Team Falcons looked strong at the event, defeating G2 Esports in their second match and also defeated MOUZ, before falling against Aurora in the semifinals, cheered on by Arabic-speaking fans every step of the way. While Arabic viewership supported a specific team, the Korean audience rose to its peak during the grand finals. 

Comparing the average viewership of this year’s Esports World Cup to other CS 2025 tournaments, the EWC ranked rather highly. In essence, it fell only behind the top third-party events of the year, which have deep-rooted esports history behind them. The EWC 2025 was less successful in terms of Peak Viewers and Hours Watched, but still ranked highly in the current 2025 Counter-Strike tournament rankings.

The Esports World Cup 2025 proved a major success for Counter-Strike, far surpassing last year’s event. With its thrilling format and new role as the festival finale, the CS2 tournament hit new heights, closing out the EWC 2025 with a bang.