IEM Rio Major 2022: Legends Stage Viewership Recap

The Legends Stage of IEM Rio Major 2022 ended on November 8. The Esports Charts team sums up the results of the stage and tells about how the popularity of languages changed & why the event showed worse results than the previous championship of the series.

Legends Stage Results

The main surprise of the stage was the early elimination of two favorites — FaZe Clan and Team Vitality — that are ranked 1st-2nd in the world. Natus Vincere reached the Playoffs at the very last moment, the team was also one step away from being eliminated. As a result, the quarterfinals will see the following pairs: Cloud9 vs. MOUZ, Fnatic vs. Outsiders, Heroic vs. Team Spirit, and NAVI vs. FURIA Esports. Worth noting that half of these teams are from Eastern Europe.

Legends Stage matches totaled 24 million Hours Watched, and drew 516K Average Viewers. Peak Viewers number reached 1.08 million during two matches that were on air concurrently: FURIA vs. BIG & elimination match between FaZe Clan & Bad News Eagles. In comparison with the Challengers Stage, the AV and PV metrics grew by 13.5% and 44%, respectively.

Natus Vincere became the leader by AV (545K), surpassing Imperial Esports. However, FalleN is still in second place, albeit it was eliminated from the competition at the Challengers Stage. Team Vitality became the leader of the tournament by HW (8 million), but it also was eliminated from the tournament.

LIVE statistics and online broadcasts of IEM Rio Major 2022

Comparison of IEM Rio Major to PGL Major Antwerp

The Legends Stage of the Brazilian tournament fell behind the last Major by all three key metrics. The HW number went down by 11.1%, the AV number dropped by 11.8%, and the PV number dropped by 3.2%. There are several reasons for this. The first one is the results of the Brazilian teams. Brazilian viewers are very attached to their favorites, most of which dropped out at the Challengers Stage. Imperial Esports, with FalleN, one of the most popular players in the region, is one of them.

Only one team from Brazil, FURIA Esports, played in the Legends Stage. The squad was among the first teams to qualify for the Playoffs, but this had a negative impact on viewership statistics. For example, as long as FURIA played, the AV and PV numbers on the Portuguese broadcast were 149.4K and 334K, respectively. After FURIA advanced to the Playoffs, these numbers dropped by 44% and 61%, respectively.

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As for other languages, the AV number of Russian-language broadcasts during Legends Stage almost doubled compared with the Challengers Stage: from 38K to 79K Average Viewers. Natus Vincere and the four Eastern European representatives reaching the Playoffs played a major role in this. The Ukrainian broadcast also showed good dynamics, which was also due to NAVI entering the field. While at the Challengers Stage the AV number on the Ukrainian stream was about 1.3K people, at the Legends Stage it went up to almost 3.2K people.

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Playoffs start today, November 10, with two matches. First, Fnatic will face off Outsiders, and then MOUZ will play against Cloud9. The final match of the tournament is scheduled for November 13.