GeoGuessr World Cup 2023 sees 71K peak concurrent viewers as Consus paints Sweden 'Oranje'
The highly-discussed GeoGuessr World Cup 2023 was held on October 13 and 14 at the Space Arena in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the first edition to embrace esports officially, giving it some added spice, which was seen in the pretty solid viewership numbers it put up.
For those unaware, GeoGuessr is an online geography-based game where players challenge themselves to explore the world virtually and guess locations based on Google Street View images. It gained much fanfare during the lockdown era, especially among prominent streamers, thanks to its potential to test users' geographic knowledge and observation skills.
The GeoGuessr World Cup 2023 recorded 71K Peak Viewers during the Day 2 clash between Consus and Blinky, doing 26.7% better than the next most popular match. The all-European finals was also one of only two games to cross 50K peak concurrent viewers, with all top five entries on this list coming from the second day, when the Quarter finals, Semi finals, and Grand finals were held.
In an event that began at the closed qualifiers stage, the Netherlands' Consus convincingly beat France's Blinky 3:1 to be crowned the historic world champion. The former was handed a trophy post-game, which amusingly broke a few minutes later. The winner's prize money of $15K would have helped ease his mind, with the losing finalist pocketing $7K.
The success of the entire competition ensured it also registered decent totals of 437K Hours Watched and 25K Average Viewers over 17 hours of airtime. What helped was that the organizers decided to utilize the broadcasting services and talents of its competitors and other famous names on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Moreover, creators covering other tournaments like The International 2023 or the IEM Sydney 2023 were seen switching games mid-map or during breaks to catch up on the action in Sweden, and that was a big deal in terms of how far it spread, how much watch time it received, and how popular it was among influencers in general.
Speaking of content creators, the likes of rainbolt, Seltzer, GeoPeter, and Geo were all part of the casting team, helping the tournament reach audiences the world over. Alongside the organizers and participants, they deserve much praise for making it as accessible and easy as possible for all kinds of fans, including those seeing what the discipline is for the first time.
It’s crazy the number of people from the esports world messaging me saying how sick geoguessr esports is
— Geo (@geometric) October 14, 2023
You’re right, it is pic.twitter.com/9ObE60fzpG
Many viewers — some of whom had never heard of GeoGuessr — agreed that it translated well into esports, with one Redditor saying:
"It was super easy to digest and contained lots of tension and drama. Who would have thought that GeoGuessr would be such great esport?"
Rainbolt's popularity was seen in the fact that his YouTube channel was the most watched and popular at this event, being the only individual one to cross 100K HW and 10K PV. That it outperformed the official Twitch handle was never in doubt, but the extraordinary thing is that his account on the purple platform was the fourth most watched and fifth most popular, meaning his contribution to the World Cup's success is up there in terms of absolute impact with any other esports competition over the years.
"Such an amazing event, the GeoGuessr World Cup turned out so much better than I could have imagined thanks to our amazing community. We had over 400 people from 20+ countries come together and celebrate the joy of exploring the world. Reading all the reactions from other esports communities (and people outside of esports) has been fantastic, I really think that we’ve found something."
Mikael Falgard, Business Developer at GeoGuessr AB
Twitch also ended as the dominant platform, accounting for over 70% of the total watch time, with only three of the 40 channels live streaming the event not belonging to it. English had a similar share of the overall share, although the statistics below will interest the organizers more, with most prominent entries being European, with the sole Asian language with any sort of presence being Japanese.
Perhaps the developers will use this data to get an idea of where the game lacks a divisive market and where it can look to improve as they plan on more such events in the future. Knowing how loyal and large a market Asian can be, perhaps it will be a good starting point for GeoGuessr as it looks to become a mainstream esports attraction.
What was a definite positive was how the game's viewership dynamics changed across platforms during the World Cup. On Twitch, it saw months-long highs in its main metrics, with the official channel also seeing an intensity in its activity that was not seen for a while.
On YouTube as well, GeoGuessr saw a similar positive effect in its viewership. It saw rises in numbers that were not seen since August, and despite seeing a fall in watch hours since June, there should be an improvement in this regard, with October hopefully proving to be a much more successful month.
With the success of this iteration, officials will hope that it can join the pantheon of popular non-esports events that have become highly-followed and sustainable recently. They will also look to avoid clashes with other high-end esports tournaments, which was the case this time as the World Cup clashed with annual monsters that are the 2023 World Championship [Worlds 2023], TI 12, and the PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2023.
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