Esports World Cup makes it into top 5 most-watched series of 2024
Having generated over 100M Hours Watched within a month of its run time, the inaugural Esports World Cup edition finally concluded on August 25. Fans of competitive video gaming witnessed countless great matches and moments across 22 events in 21 titles as home side Team Falcons walked away with the Club Championship gong.
The end of the Esports World Cup 2024 also means that we can take a look at its cumulative watch time and rank it compared to other prominent series. For those wondering, this Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, cross-event spectacle became the fourth series to cross the 120M HW barrier this year, with the overall prize pool of around $60 million ranking a lot higher than anything else.
The top series by cumulative watch time in 2024 remains the ongoing Valorant Champions Tour with more than 267 million HW. VCT 2024: Masters Madrid, the title's most popular tournament ever, played a big role in this development. Second is the LCK, the top Korean League of Legends championship, and it is closely followed by the MLBB Professional League, with some of these entries set to add to their tallies over the next few months.
Within the EWC 2024, the most watched competitions came from some prominent games. Many of the tournaments emerged as some of the most successful this year in their titles. The top event by HW in the Saudi Arabia spectacle came from a mobile esports offering, making it one of the two entries alongside a legendary MOBA to total over 20 million HW.
In total, the top four tournaments by watch time, which includes the competitions for LoL and Counter-Strike 2, made up over 64% of the 120 million-plus HW accrued by the EWC 2024. Given the nature and popularity of these titles, that might not be too surprising to readers, but it is still a huge chunk considering there were 16 other titles involved as well.
While the EWC’s viewership could not come close to the top three series of our ranking, the compact and quick nature of each tournament played a part in limiting its watch time. With more and more editions, the organizers are sure to also add more titles and experiment with formats to make things that much more interesting.
Moving to prize pools, the EWC 2024's offerings in terms of earnings were way above any other series seen so far. Even when looking at individual games, many doled out record purses to their participants, including MLBB, Warzone, and Apex Legends.
As a result, its $60M purse is the the highest cumulative payout of all time in esports, going past Dota 2's The International series. It is also the one with the highest-ever prize pool within a single year, with the next best entry for 2024 being the FNCS with $5.45 million. In fact, only three other series — Valorant Champions Tour, Call of Duty League, Rocket League Championship Series, and Six Invitational — have a total of $3 million and above ready to reward their players and teams this year.
Readers must note that the Esports World Cup 2024's total prize pool was over $60 million, with around a third of that kept aside for the Club Championship. All the esports organizations participating in this series were involved, with the 16 best clubs sharing $20 million based on their overall performance across games in the tournament.
However, to be eligible for the Club Championship, a club required at least two top-eight finishes across competitions. To win the championship title, an org had to finish first in at least one tournament, with Team Falcons finally emerging as the champion and pocketing $7 million.
Returning to the prize pool for esports events, such a high purse also meant that the EWC 2024 brought in 2.01 HW for every dollar put up for participation: with the Six Invitational, which attracted 4.3 HW for every dollar added to the prize pool, coming in next.
For comparison, the VCT 2024 drew in over 70 HW for every dollar put up as winnings, reiterating why it has become one of the most robust and well-run disciplines in the competitive community today.
The annual gaming festival in Saudi Arabia, under its earlier Gamers8 guise, had cultivated a reputation for providing high-class action while also amply rewarding its participants. However, after its rebranding as the EWC, this year's inaugural edition took things to a new level, and with the kind of response it received, the organizers are sure to come back bigger and better next year.
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