IEM Rio Major 2022 language and team statistics: what are the reasons for the audience decrease?
Last weekend, IEM Rio Major 2022 ended, which, despite becoming one of the most popular tournaments in the history of CS:GO, still lost to the two previous majors by viewership. In the new article, Esports Charts will look at the statistics of teams and broadcast languages in order to identify key reasons for the tournament's audience decline.
Broadcast languages
The audience of many broadcast languages of IEM Rio Major 2022 has noticeably decreased in comparison with the two previous majors, and this happened for a variety of reasons: from the early departure of teams to the lack of broadcasts on certain channels. At the same time, the growth shown by the audience of some languages was rather insignificant.
Compared to the last tournament of the series, the number of Average Viewers of the IEM Rio Major in the English-speaking segment grew by only 4.1%. The respective indicator for Portuguese-language broadcasts decreased by 12.1%, but still surpasses the result of the PGL Stockholm Major. This decrease is because most of the Brazilian teams left the Rio Major at the first stage (Challengers Stage). The situation was somewhat alleviated only by FURIA Esports reaching the semi-finals of the tournament, having beaten NAVI in the quarter-finals. Note that the match against the Ukrainian team became the tournament’s most popular one, gathering 1.42M Peak Viewers. At the same time, the Grand Final between Outsiders and Heroic did not even make it into the top 5 most popular matches among Portuguese-speaking viewers.
The number of Average Viewers of Russian-language broadcasts of Rio Major decreased by 2.5% compared to Major Antwerp and was almost two times less compared to the major in Stockholm. On the other hand, Hispanic broadcasts grew by more than 10.2%, exceeding Stockholm Major three times by the metric: however, one should remember that the language is not among the key ones for the discipline.
A separate mention goes to the Vietnamese and Polish broadcasts of Rio Major, whose Average Viewers indicators, in comparison with Major Antwerp, decreased by x12 and x3 times, respectively. The reason for the decrease in the Vietnamese-speaking audience was the lack of broadcasts on NimoTV from the 500 Bros studio at the IEM Rio Major, which had the rights to cover the PGL majors. The Polish audience decreased because the popular streamer IzakOOO was part of the official analytics studio of the event, which is why he did not cover the major on his personal channel which is popular among viewers.
Despite the decrease in the audience of many languages, several records were still set at IEM Rio Major 2022. For example, French, Ukrainian, German, and Tagalog have updated their Peak Viewers records at CS:GO Majors, while Albanian and Mongolian have updated their Peak Viewers records across the entire discipline.
Team popularity analysis
At the IEM Rio Major, for the first time in the history of CS:GO majors, the grand final did not become the number one match of the tournament by Peak Viewers. However, this happens periodically in other large championships. For example, at ESL Pro League Season 15, the most popular match was the quarter-finals of FaZe Clan against NAVI, while the grand final with ENCE and FaZe took only the third spot. This often happens if the teams playing in the finals are not very popular.
The most popular CS:GO team of 2022 is Natus Vincere, so it's not surprising that matches with their participation exceed the grand finals of various tournaments by Peak Viewers. It should be reminded that NAVI is the champion of PGL Major Stockholm 2021 and the silver medalist of PGL Major Antwerp 2022. Therefore, we can safely say that if NAVI had not lost to FURIA in the quarterfinals of IEM Rio Major 2022, then the final statistics of the major would have been higher.
Meeting in the grand final of IEM Rio Major 2022 were far from the most popular teams: Heroic (top 10) and Outsiders (top 15). The number of their Average Viewers for the year was more than two times fewer than that of NAVI, and more than 100K concurrent viewers behind the respective indicators of G2 Esports (top 2) and Imperial Esports (top 3). If FURIA had made it to the grand finals instead of Heroic, then the major’s Peak Viewers indicator would have been much higher, since it is the second most popular team in the tournament after NAVI. But if MOUZ had played instead of the Outsiders in the decisive match, this would have had a negative impact on the statistics, since this team occupies an even lower spot in the Average Viewers ranking for 2022.
The viewership statistics of tournaments largely depend on the popularity of the teams participating in them. Should the teams with the largest number of fans not qualify for the final, one can forget about setting a new Peak Viewers record. It should be reminded that IEM Rio Major 2022 showed the best statistics at the start, overtaking both PGL Stockholm Major 2021 and PGL Major Antwerp 2022, but the situation changed after the departure of most Brazilian teams, including Imperial.
Detailed Esports data at your fingertips.
Subscribe to & start exploring!
