FFSI 2023 becomes second-most popular Free Fire event this year

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The Free Fire SEA Invitational 2023 ended yesterday, capping off a decent start to the revamped 2023 esports season for the popular battle royale game. Interestingly, it was the second most popular event in the discipline this year, although it was nowhere near the event it supposedly replaced this year, the Free Fire World Series, regarding viewership numbers.

The tournament ran from May 12 to May 28 in Thailand, with eArena topping the Grand Finals table to emerge victorious. The home side led a one-two for the host country as Magic Esport finished second, with the top two taking home $100K and $40K, respectively.

  Free Fire SEA Invitational 2023 Live Viewership Statistics   

The Free Fire SEA Invitational 2023 hit 107K Peak Viewers during Day 1 of the three-day Grand Finals. All of the most popular rounds came from the last stage of this tournament, which saw teams from Thailand and Indonesia dominate.

Only five rounds from the Grand Finals hit the 100K PV mark, with four of them understandably coming from the last day. The one game that was not from Day 3 ended up topping this list as the most popular overall.

It saw Vietnamese side SBTC Esports showcase some clever plays to get the better of Morph Team and Magic Esport in the end zone and claim the victory with eight kills. Star player NEO’s amazing performance helped the team get off to a good start in the Grand Finals.

YouTube continued to be number one when watching Free Fire matches live in the Asian region, with the platform taking up almost 64% of the overall pie. However, there was still something to worry about for the company, as this was a 30% fall from the previous big-ticket event, the Free Fire World Series 2022 Bangkok.

Instead, it was Facebook and TikTok that grew their shares in this department. The two sites had an almost even share, also showcasing the rising popularity of the video-sharing app as a destination to catch the action.

Indonesia and Vietnam are two of the biggest markets for Free Fire, and that showed in the language stats. The two country’s languages topped the viewership pie, combining to take up more than 72% of the overall share. Both languages increased their shares in the total from last time, however, when talking pure numbers, Vietnamese was the only major broadcast language that grew significantly, while Indonesian actually saw a drop in concurrent viewership.

Speaking of Thailand, the host nation’s language saw improvement in terms of its share in total watch time of the event, but. failed to grow in terms of pure numbers compared to FFWS 2022 Bangkok. Average number of concurrent viewers dropped two times (from 16K to 8K Average Viewers), while the peak decreased by 49% (from 34.7K to 18K).

Some other major languages also did see dips in terms of viewership, especially Portuguese. There were no teams from the Brazil and LATAM regions, which affected the viewership a lot. Additionally, the only Portuguese-speaking representative, Vasto Mundo, failed to make it past the Group Stage. 

Spanish also completely fell out of the picture this time around, again not helped by the fact that there was no representation of the language. Last time around, Argentina’s Naguara Team and South America’s Ignis Esports were there to keep Hispanic fans engaged, but that was not the case this time around.

  The five most popular Free Fire events from 2023 (January - May)   

The Free Fire SEA Invitational 2023 ended up becoming the second most popular and watched competition for the discipline this year. The one event that overtook it on both metrics was the Free Fire Master League Season 7, the Indonesian qualifier for this mid-season tournament.

The viewership numbers for this competition could have been more spectacular, but with a new roadmap for Free Fire from 2023 that will see only one FFWS at the end of the season, teething issues are to be expected. With no more continental series, there will be a lull before the new structure takes shape properly and brings more eyeballs to the product.

With the first-ever FFSI done and dusted, all teams from different regions will now focus their energies on the fall seasonal tournaments. With qualification for the Free Fire World Series 2023 at stake, Garena will hope that viewership numbers pick up heading into the mega event.