Esports World Cup 2025 delivers growth across every game

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The Esports World Cup 2025 (EWC) has wrapped up, with its second edition once again attracting millions of viewers worldwide. But how did the individual titles perform? While most games enjoyed growth across key metrics, some could have achieved even higher numbers. Esports Charts breaks down the rankings and takes a closer look at the viewership trends.

The latest edition of the EWC brought several changes from last year. While the event was shortened from eight to seven weeks, it featured even more content with the addition of new titles: most notably Valorant, along with chess, where top grandmasters represented esports organizations.

Across all 25 tournaments, every title grew in at least one key metric (watch time or peak concurrent viewership). Dota 2, however, saw a drop in watch time, and Counter-Strike narrowly missed last year’s peak.

Both drops came down to objective factors. For Dota 2, a major format shift cut the number of group stage matches, reducing broadcast hours by roughly 40% and dragging down total watch time, though average viewership held steady year-over-year.

Counter-Strike’s dip, on the other hand, stemmed from the early exits of major crowd-pullers like Natus Vincere, Team Spirit and FaZe Clan. The final (The MongolZ vs. Aurora Gaming) nearly reached last year’s peak, but despite rallying strong Mongolian and Turkish fan bases, it fell short of attracting audiences from key regions such as Russia & other post-Soviet countries, Brazil and Western Europe.

Other titles posted gains ranging from modest (up to 50%) to strong (50-100%) and even exceptional (over 100%). One standout was PUBG Mobile, which surged between 90% and 145% across key metrics. The boost came largely from an expanded broadcast presence, with YouTube audiences turning out in enough greater numbers to become the majority viewership share across platforms.

Rainbow Six: Siege recorded explosive growth across all viewership metrics, finally reaching numbers comparable to Ubisoft/BLAST’s official circuit. The boost came from higher viewership on official channels and a wider range of options for viewers, with more co-casters contributing to the coverage.

Rocket League also experienced explosive growth, even surpassing one of the recent RLCS Majors in viewership. The key factor was the dream scenario of Karmine Corp reaching the finals, currently the game’s most popular team. Much of this success can be attributed to co-owner and streamer Kemal “Kameto” Kebir, whose broadcasts consistently draw tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of viewers to the team’s matches.

Another factor is that the Esports World Cup is gradually cementing itself in the minds of esports fans and becoming more institutionalized. Unlike last year, when it was a novelty and many broadcasts took place on new or little-known channels, this time the audience base didn’t have to start from scratch. As a result, it’s no surprise that nearly every title showed at least some growth.

Despite the overall impressive growth across nearly all titles, there was still room for even greater viewership. In particular, the League of Legends and Valorant tournaments weren’t broadcast on Riot’s official channels, which limited their exposure to a wider audience. On top of that, both tournaments were scheduled immediately after major seasonal events in their respective games (Mid-Season Invitational 2025 & Valorant Masters Toronto 2025), which likely diluted attention from fans. With more strategic timing and official channel support, these titles have strong potential to achieve even higher engagement in future editions.

Viewership could have been even higher if similar strategies were applied across other major titles. Take Overwatch and Apex Legends for example: both games integrated their esports seasons (OWCS and ALGS respectively) into the EWC schedule in a way that avoided conflicts with mid-season tournaments and instead made these events part of the EWC itself. This approach helped both titles grow their audience within the festival. Ideally, EWC could achieve similar gains by aligning more closely with the official circuits, allowing those fan-favorite games to fully benefit from the event’s exposure.

Overall, the Esports World Cup 2025 delivered strong growth across nearly every title, proving its place as a major fixture in the esports calendar. At the same time, there’s clearly room for improvement: strategic scheduling and closer integration with official circuits could push viewership even higher in the future.

Stay tuned: in our next report for PRO subscribers, we’ll dive deeper into the numbers, trends, and insights behind this year’s festival.