GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series Thailand 2022 overview

GAMERS GALAXY Invitational Series Thailand 2022, a regional Dota 2 tournament for Southeast Asia organized by GAMERS GALAXY, ended on August 20. The competition was held at the Central Hatyai venue in Hat Yai, where eight participants from the region competed for a prize pool of $150K.

Participants of the event were placed in two groups. In Group A, BOOM Esports and Polaris Esports made it to the playoffs, while Talon Esports and Army Geniuses did not qualify for the playoffs. In Group B, Execration and RSG showed the best results, while the much better-known rosters Team SMG and Fnatic were unexpectedly eliminated.

BOOM Esports defeated RSG in the first stage of the playoffs, while Polaris Esports defeated Execration. BOOM defeated Polaris 3-2 in the title match and earned $75K, while its opponent won $30K.

Viewership Statistics

The GAMERS GALAXY Invitational Series Thailand 2022 matches accumulated 826K Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number was 25.3K people, and the Peak Viewers number was 62.8K. The most popular game of the tournament was the Grand final between Polaris Esports and BOOM Esports. The latter also became the most watched team of the event, its matches racked up 458K Hours Watched.

The main broadcast language of the tournament was English, it reached 20.8K Peak Viewers. The Top-3 most popular languages also includes Indonesian (14.7K PV) and Filipino (12.5K PV), with Russian reaching a bit fewer viewers (10.4K PV). The main platform to watch tournament matches was Twitch (34K Peak Viewers). YouTube had slightly fewer viewers (23.7K PV), and Facebook Gaming had about 7.3K Peak Viewers.

Tournaments viewership comparison

The same tournament operator had held GAMERS GALAXY Invitational Series Dubai 2022 earlier in March, but there were teams from several regions: CIS, Europe, North America and Southeast Asia. Ten participants then played for a prize pool of $272K, and the interesting thing is that BOOM Esports also became the champion of the tournament at that time.

The tournament in the United Arab Emirates had 6.5 times more Hours Watched, and its Peak Viewers number was almost 4 times higher than the one in the Thailand tournament. Obviously, a more diverse list of participants played a major role in this, because the Dubai event saw famous teams like the champions of The International in the past years, Team Spirit and OG. The GAMERS GALAXY Invitational Series Thailand 2022 did not have such a variety of teams: there were representatives of only one region whose matches were hardly of interest to large audiences in Europe or North America.

The GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series Thailand 2022 roster includes almost all Dota Pro Circuit 2021/2022 Division One teams except T1. Before the tournament, the T1 team had a serious lineup change, replacing Karl and Gabbi with Ana and Topson, both two-time champions of The International. If T1 had played with this new lineup, it would have surely attracted more attention to the Thailand event. Unfortunately for fans, the team did not participate in the tournament. Another reason why interest in the event may have decreased is the early elimination of Talon Esports and Fnatic, both of which can be called some of the most famous and successful teams in the region.

If we compare the event with other tournaments of the same region, GAMERS GALAXY Invitational Series Thailand 2022 slightly surpassed the regional series from BTS by audience coverage. On the other hand, the larger ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational Singapore (comparable to the GAMERS GALAXY tournament in Dubai) and ONE Esports Singapore Major 2021 are completely out of reach by key metrics.

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Another big event in SEA is already live. ESL One Malaysia 2022 features 12 teams, including BOOM, Fnatic and Talon, from five regions. The event will run from August 23 to 28. The teams will compete for a prize pool of $400K and the final stage of the tournament will take place at the Arena of Stars.