FIFAe World Cup 2023 is second-most popular competition this year

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The FIFAe World Cup 2023, the final event of the 2023 FIFA Global Series organized by EA and FIFA, was held from July 16 to July 19. It ended as the second-most popular tournament in the discipline this year, giving the series a good send-off, as it will be known as the FC PRO World Championship in 2024, thanks to the end of the partnership between EA and FIFA.

Dutchman Manuel emerged as the champion, beating Australia’s Mark11 5:4 in the penalty shootout after a 3:3 aggregate draw in their single elimination in the Knockout Stage's Grand Final. The winner took home $300K while the losing finalist pocketed $150K from the overall prize pool of $1M at the offline competition in Saudi Arabia.

Viewership stats from the FIFAe World Cup 2023

  Basic stats and most popular matches from the FIFAe World Cup 2023 recap  

The FIFA competition hit 55K Peak Viewers during the summit clash between Manuel (Team Gullit) and Mark11 (FUTWIZ) on July 19. The former was highly in demand among fans, as he was part of three of the five most popular games.

Moreover, no other match-up touched 50K PV, with only one breaching the 40K mark, which was the Knockout Stage Semifinals meeting between Mark11 and Brazil’s Phzin (Ajax eSports), which the former won 5:3. This also meant that the two finalists were the most popular players by average concurrent viewers, with Manuel leading by a healthy 14.9%. The FIFAe World Cup 2023 also notched 703K Hours Watched and 27K Average Viewers over an airtime of 25 hours.

English was the dominant language this time, claiming 42.4% of the overall watch hours at this tournament, somewhat the same as the previous iteration, the FIFAe World Cup 2022. However, there was a surprise language that finished second after coming nowhere near the top ten last year, and that will give EA hopes that diversifying the venues for its flagship esports event will only be a major positive in terms of success.

This time, despite still being the top platform by a mile, Twitch saw a fall in its share of the total charts by 12.35%, a result of the geographic dynamics. The purple platform is not as popular in Asia as it is in the West, which is where 2022’s event was held (Denmark). As a result, YouTube, a much larger presence in this market, rose by 8.54%, with Kick also registering a small fraction of the viewership stats.

Sergio Aguero was the most popular channel at this competition held by FIFA, doing 53% better than the next best channel. A home streamer was the third-most-popular and second-most-watched content creator at the FIFAe World Cup 2023, showing just how much the home audience was invested in the event and the run of local lad AboMakkah, who made it till Round 1 of the Knockout Stage after topping Group B in the Pool Stage.

For Kick, there was a shoot of positivity as well as playaway was the tenth-most-watched and eleventh-most popular streamer at the tournament.

  Comparing the last five editions of the esports version of the FIFA World Cup   

The FIFAe World Cup 2023 was the fourth most watched and fourth most popular tournament in the series when looking at the past five editions. The leader in both regards remains the FIFA eWorld Cup 2019, which did 1.3M HW and 244K PV, although it was the by far the longest by airtime.

The 2023 edition suffered from a lack of interest among fans as there were other online events — esports and otherwise — that took attention away from it. It definitely missed the coverage of handles like eliasn97 and easportsfc, which contributed majorly to the high viewership numbers posted last year but were absent this time around.

Also, with the partnership ending 30 years of games between FIFA and EA, viewers did not seem to want to commit to the esports world cup as much as before, with many already looking forward to EA Sports’ solo version for later this year, EA Sports FC 24.

  Most popular FIFA esports competitions in 2023   

When looking at FIFA events this year, the FIFAe World Cup 2023 ended as the second most popular behind the EA Sports Cup, which leads all the metrics by a long shot. It was also the third-most watched tournament in 2023, with the eChampions League 2023 taking up the second spot here.

Moreover, the world football body has not revealed any news of bringing back a FIFA-branded game with a different developer anytime soon, so non-hardcore fans may just have switched off from all things FIFA as things stand. Lastly, it does feel like the lesser number of participants this year, 24 compared to 32 in 2022, hurt the tournament more than anything else, and the organizers will give it a good think ahead of the rebranded FC PRO World Championship in 2024.