Halo World Championship 2022 failed to outpace Call of Duty League Finals by viewership

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Halo World Championship 2022 with a million-dollar prize pool ended on October 24 in Seattle. It marked the end of the first complete Halo Championship Series esports season since the series has shifted to the Halo Infinite version. Esports Charts provides a recap of the tournament and compares HWC and its direct competitors in terms of audience reach.

Tournament Results

Halo World Championship 2022 featured 20 teams — winners and participants in the regional stages of Halo Championship Series 2022: Orlando. The organizers held a Play-In before the main event, after which the top 16 teams were determined to be placed in four separate groups.

OpTic Gaming with a trophy / photo: twitter.com/OpTic 

Teams in the group stage fought for playoff seeding — the teams with the worst results left the tournament immediately, while the rest were split into upper and lower double-elimination brackets. OpTic Gaming became the best team in the tournament as it reached the upper bracket final, defeating Gamers First, Sentinels, and Native Gaming Red. OpTic defeated Cloud9 in the Grand Final, which made its way to the final through the lower bracket.

OpTic Gaming earned $400K for winning the tournament, while Cloud9 earned $220K. Interestingly, FormaL, an OpTic Gaming player, became the second player ever to win the Halo and Call of Duty World Championships. Shotzzy was the first to accomplish this goal. He also was at Halo World Championship 2022, but not as a player, but as one of the community casters.

Viewership Statistics

Halo World Championship 2022 viewership statistics

Halo World Championship 2022 matches accumulated 1.9 million Hours Watched in 34 hours of Airtime. The event saw 55.7K Average Viewers and 143.5K Peak Viewers. OpTic Gaming vs. Cloud9 match on Playoffs Day 2 became the most popular game of the tournament. It is these two teams that accumulated the most HW of the total, and it is their games that became the leaders by AV number on broadcasts.

More than 97% of Halo World Championship 2022 viewers watched the tournament broadcasts in English. Another 2.7% were on the Spanish broadcasts. As for platforms, over 91% of the total HW were amassed on Twitch, and the remaining 9% — on YouTube. 

We should note that Halo Infinity reached 130K PV on Twitch during the tournament, the highest total in 2022. Only HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh 2021 saw more viewers. 

Most popular channels of Halo World Championship 2022

The most popular broadcast channels at Halo World Championship 2022 are the official Halo channels on Twitch and Halo Esports on YouTube. We should also note that community casters were actively involved in the tournament's coverage. The largest audience was gathered by the professional player and streamer Shotzzy. 

Comparison With Other Tournaments

Halo World Championship 2022 became the third largest tournament in history of the game by major metrics. It ranks behind HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh 2021 (267K PV) and Bud Light Seltzer's Battle of The Best Tournament: Halo (155.2K PV) by Peak Viewers. As for Hours Watched, the recent World Championship is behind the same Major in Raleigh (4.2 million HW) and HCS Anaheim 2022 (2 million HW).

Most popular Halo tournaments

We can also compare the recent Halo World Championship to the latest Call of Duty League finals, as both shooters are direct rivals in the region. Moreover, some top clubs like OpTic Gaming and FaZe Clan have lineups in both disciplines.

So far, we can conclude that the Call of Duty tournament has almost doubled the results of the Halo tournament both by Average and Peak Viewers. It is important to note that the Halo tournament was broadcast on Twitch with the active participation of community casters, and CDL matches were shown only on the official league channels on YouTube.

Call of Duty League Finals 2022 vs Halo World Championship 2022 viewership

Based on these two tournaments, we can see that Halo's pro scene is currently far behind Call of Duty in the battle for viewers. The re-launch of the HCS league and the release of Halo Infinity helped draw an impressive audience at the first Major in Raleigh, but since then things have developed a disappointing trend. It's been almost a year and major metrics of the World Championship have more than halved. The Halo tournament didn't even benefit from the fact that it was actively covered on Twitch by community casters.

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Several Halo Infinity LAN tournaments are already scheduled for the 2022/2023 Winter Season. OpTic Gaming and Spacestation Gaming will hold their own events in December and January, and HCS Kickoff Major will take place on February 24-26 in Charlotte, North Carolina, which will be the first official event of the new tournament season.