Halo esports is back — the first events with NAVI, OpTic and Cloud9 already ended; grand plans for 2022

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The multiplayer version of Halo Infinite was released just over a week ago, and the game's developers have already held their first tournaments. Halo Championship Series 2021-2022 will feature some of the world's top teams, including Natus Vincere, G2 Esports, OpTic Gaming and Cloud9. Total prize pool of the season will exceed $3 million! Esports Charts will tell you about the HCS ecosystem and sum up the results of the series' debut.

Halo Championship Series returns after two years

Halo is one of North America's classic esports disciplines, but for the past few years its future has been in considerable doubt. The last Halo Championship Series events were held in 2018, and after that the series took a break for an indefinite period.

HCS 2018 was the last season in the series before 2021 relaunch

The game developers from 343 Industries have big plans for Halo Infinite esports. The day after the multiplayer release, the developers announced the structure and format of HCS 2021-2022: three major championships will be held until next fall, and on October 22 the World Championship with a prize money pool of one million dollars will kick off. In total, the series will have more than $3 million in prize pool— money from in-game purchases will also be added to the pool: the in-game shop already offers sets of the series' partner teams.

Before the release of Halo Infinite, it was known that many leading esports teams will take part in a competitive season. Nine organizations — NAVI, G2 Esports, Fnatic, FaZe Clan, Cloud9, OpTic Gaming, eUnited, Spacestation Gaming and Sentinels — became partners of the HCS. And that list is sure to grow in the future.

The first big tournament of the season will take place in less than a month — December 17-19. It will be HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh 2021 with a prize money pool of $250K. The event will be the first Halo LAN tournament since DreamHack Anaheim 2020.

Statistics of the first HCS tournaments 2021-2022

In addition to the majors and world championship, the HCS season consists of many lower-tier competitions where teams earn not only prize money, but also the HCS points needed to qualify for the majors and final event of the season.

The first HCS 2021-2022 events in the Open Series took place on 20-21 November. These events are split into four regions — North America, Europe, Mexico and Australia/New Zealand. A total of nearly 600 teams competed in the debut events. The North American championship was hyped the most — over 400 teams registered for the event.

HCS 2021-2022 Open Series first event statistics

Past tournaments were streamed on the official Halo channels on Twitch and YouTube, and some teams streamed their matches too. All tournaments, including the ones for teams from Mexico and New Zealand/Australia, attracted several thousand Peak Viewers.

The new region of the game was the least popular — the number of Average Viewers at the matches in Mexico was only 760 people. However, the other tournaments showed fairly high numbers for Halo, especially the championship for North American teams.

North American qualifiers drew way more viewers than the biggest HCS 2018 tournaments

North America has always been Halo's main region, and the NA HCS Open Qualifier #1 statistics proved that viewers missed professional matches a lot. The decisive game of the event between OpTic and Cloud9 was watched by over 66,5K viewers at the peak! It's 3-4 times more than most HCS 2018 events had.

There was a huge number of teams competing in the tournament, and not all matches were broadcast by the organisers. However, the matches involving the most prominent teams could be watched by the audience — more than 19.4K Average Viewers watched the matches, which is an extremely high figure for Halo.

HCS Viewership Comparison: 2018 vs 2021

The return of Halo esports was a great success. The first events aren't really big, but they attracted thousands of spectators. There will be another Open Series before the end of November, and after that we're looking forward to the first major event in the discipline where we're expecting even more viewers!