How Esports Charts powers ESL’s $2.95M viewership-based incentive program
In esports, fans don’t just follow tournaments — they follow teams. Loyal fanbases can significantly impact event viewership, sometimes regardless of competitive results. Yet historically, high audience draw hasn’t always translated into financial or structural support for teams.
As the esports industry matures and aligns more closely with traditional sports, tournament organizers face a growing challenge: how to reward teams not only for winning, but for the value they bring to the ecosystem through viewership and fan engagement — without compromising competitive integrity.
This challenge became especially relevant in Counter-Strike, where popular teams often generate massive audiences but operate in an open ecosystem without franchising or guaranteed revenue streams. Solving it required a transparent, data-driven way — something ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) ultimately built with Esports Charts.
The ESL Annual Club Incentive: rewarding value beyond the scoreboard
To address this imbalance, ESL — one of the world’s largest esports tournament organizers — introduced the ESL Annual Club Incentive, a structured revenue-sharing and support program designed to provide long-term financial stability for esports clubs while incentivizing brand growth, competitive performance, and fan engagement.
In line with Valve’s updated guidelines, the program does not guarantee permanent league slots or franchise-style security. Instead, it rewards consistent participation and measurable contribution to the ecosystem throughout Group Stages.
In other esports titles, such as Valorant, franchised league models provide teams with stipends and long-term financial guarantees. While Counter-Strike has historically thrived without such structures, ESL’s approach introduces a safety net without franchising, tailored to the realities of the CS ecosystem.
"We believe incentives should extend beyond tournament placement alone. Currently, viewership is our most effective proxy for the value a team brings to the ecosystem. While this mechanism is new, its first year has been a success.
Moving forward, we will continue to review the rewards to ensure they appropriately reflect a team’s total contribution. Ultimately, a rating system is only as good as it is transparent; we’ve prioritized simplicity so that any organization, from CS veterans to newcomers from other titles, can clearly see how to maximize their impact."
— commented Marc Winther, Director Esports - Counter-Strike, EFG.
The challenge: how to sustain tournament economics in an open, non-franchised ecosystem
As esports viewership continues to grow, teams and their fanbases have become a major driver of tournament success. The presence — or absence — of certain teams can dramatically influence viewership outcomes for organizers.
However, popularity doesn’t always align with competitive success. For example, Brazilian organization FURIA ranked as the #7 CS2 team of 2024 by Average Viewers, yet earned only $212,000 in prize money throughout the year. This highlights a recurring issue: teams that bring excitement and audiences are not always rewarded proportionally through competitive results alone.
“Сompetitive results capture who wins the tournament. Viewership data shows who sustains the ecosystem.
Esports tournament organizers may usually focus on who advances deep into the playoffs, while underestimating the teams that drive the majority of the audience engagement and viewership earlier in the event.
However, the EFG team clearly understands the necessity to involve the audience from the very beginning. That's why they pay so much attention to the group stage. As a result, their program encourages teams to work more effectively with their audience, which directly affects their share of the pie,”
— observed Sergii Rudenko, CSO of Esports Charts.
At the same time, Valve’s 2025 guidelines limited the use of franchising and long-term slot guarantees, reducing the ways organizers could structurally support teams.
The question became clear: How can tournament organizers reward teams for their real contribution to the ecosystem — transparently, fairly, and in compliance with Valve’s rules?
The solution: a transparent, data-driven incentive system powered by Esports Charts
To build a dynamic and objective evaluation system, ESL partnered with Esports Charts for a custom analytics dashboard tracking team viewership performance across the ESL Pro Tour ecosystem.
Using consistent, platform-agnostic viewership data, ESL gained the ability to:
- Measure how teams perform in terms of audience draw across multiple events
- Track changes in viewership over time, tournament by tournament
- Compare teams objectively, regardless of match results or placements
This data became the backbone of ESL’s $2.95M Annual Club Incentive program, where:
- 10% of revenue and 25% of profit from ESL’s tier-one CS2 events are redistributed to teams
- Teams earn Viewership Points based on their Average Viewers during Group Stages, calculated event by event
The Esports Charts dashboard provided a clear, transparent visualization of which teams consistently attracted audiences — and how their viewership evolved throughout the season. By utilizing only Group Stage data, ESL gave all teams a level playing field and avoided playoffs inflating viewership.
The results: turning team viewership into a sustainable business lever
Thanks to Esports Charts’ data, ESL could reward teams for generating excitement — even when competitive results fell short.
To give another instance, at IEM Dallas 2025, Team Liquid was eliminated in the group stage with a 1–2 record. Despite this, the team recorded 304,503 Average Viewers, finishing the event with the second-highest viewership overall, fueled by strong local support from North American fans.
As a result, Team Liquid earned 12 Viewership Points, which translated to approximately $56,500 in Annual Club Incentive rewards by the end of the year.
Across the season, multiple teams benefited from the program despite relatively modest prize winnings — including organizations such as Team Falcons and NAVI, whose consistent audience pull significantly boosted their final incentive payouts.
"While we've kept the program simple, teams are still navigating its finer nuances. We’re already seeing shifts in behavior, but we expect the long-term impact of the 'attendance multiplier' to become even clearer as teams realize the value of consistency. Ultimately, our goal is to align our incentives with team interests: by rewarding those who drive viewership and attend regularly, we create a sustainable, win-win ecosystem,"
— commented Marc Winther, Director Esports - Counter-Strike, EFG.
Co-streaming growth as a secondary effect
By linking rewards to Average Viewers for teams, ESL increased the value of audience growth and engagement during their events. In some cases, this led to regional fanbases rallying behind a local co-streamer to cheer on their favourite team — Ukrainian streamer Mykhailo “Leb1ga” Lebiga’s coverage of NAVI’s games attracted tens of thousands of viewers across mulitple ESL events.
In 2025, ESL tournaments recorded +59.8% year-over-year growth in co-streamed Average Viewers, compared to +39.2% for BLAST (excluding Majors and qualifiers). This suggests that once viewership became a measurable and rewarded metric, expanded distribution channels gained greater strategic importance within ESL’s ecosystem.
Why this matters for tournament organizers
By leveraging Esports Charts’ analytics, ESL transformed raw viewership data into a practical financial instrument — aligning incentives for teams, organizers, sponsors and fans alike.
For tournament organizers, this approach enables:
- Transparent, data-driven reward systems without franchising
- Objective assessment of team value beyond match results
- Stronger alignment between competitive performance and commercial outcomes
“I believe that similar incentive programs can be relevant to all the members of the esports ecosystem, beyond ESL or Counter-Strike. Since it brings a revolutionary update to the logic of the financial reward system in esports.
After all, everyone wins: tournament operators, teams, publishers. And most of all, all brands that invest their marketing budgets in esports, because this way they understand that access to the most valuable entity, the audience, is there,"
— shared Sergii Rudenko, CSO of Esports Charts.
Esports Charts’ custom solutions allow organizers to identify, reward, and retain the teams that truly drive audience engagement — creating healthier, more sustainable esports ecosystems.
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