The International 10 Group Stage: Viewership Stats and Results

There were a lot of intrigues at the group stage of The International 10, but its results are hard to be labelled as unpredictable. The Chinese teams Invictus Gaming and PSG.LGD became the leaders of the groups, two teams from South America did not make it to Arena Națională, Team Secret and OG paved their way to winners bracket, as well as the best CIS teams Virtus.pro and Team Spirit. Esports Charts summarizes the results of the stage and compares its viewership statistics with the last event in the series.

The International audience has grown, but not that much

Dota 2 fans have been waiting for the tournament for two whole years. In 2020, TI was canceled for obvious reasons, but the coronavirus stabbed the event this time too: the players of two Chinese teams had positive tests for COVID-19, and the difficult situation in Romania forced the organizers to cancel live attendance at the stadium.

But the problems of the offline event have nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of Dota fans who are used to watching the tournament online. Shortly before the start of the first matches, it was revealed that it will be possible to earn Battle Pass points and get a new treasure chest during TI broadcasts on Twitch.

Disclaimer: data doesn’t include statistics from Chinese streaming platforms!

And it had an effect: compared to TI9, the time viewers spent on TI10’s Twitch broadcasts increased by 56% with almost the same airtime. Taking into account all platforms, total Hours Watched of the championship has also increased compared to TI9, but not as impressive: +18%.

In terms of other metrics, The International 10 also started better than the last tournament in the series. The average audience of the championship grew by 20% and amounted to 711.1K viewers, and at the Peak Viewers number grew by 36%: over 1.13M people were simultaneously watching TI broadcasts on the first day of the group stage.

Everybody's following OG

Whether OG will get its third Aegis is one of the main plots of The International 10. The European team consistently attracts the most spectators among all the teams of the competitive Dota, and TI10 was no exception. The top 5 most popular matches of the group stage included only the games of two-time world champions.

The most popular match in the group stage was the rivalry of Fly and n0tail: over 637.3K people simultaneously watched the game between Evil Geniuses and OG. The second place was taken by the game of the Europeans with one of the most popular teams of the CIS - Virtus.pro (530K spectators at peak).

OG became the most popular team in the group stage by a huge margin. The average audience of its matches was over 317.6K spectators. This is 100K+ more than Team Secret had, which became the second most watched team during the group stage. Less than 200K spectators usually watched the matches of the other teams; Virtus.pro, PSG.LGD and Evil Geniuses entered the top 5.

The playoff stage at The International 10 has already begun. Unlike the group stage, now the games will go one after the other (and not four games at a time), which means that the attention of the audience will no longer be very scattered, and therefore a new viewership record will soon be set at TI10. And it will almost certainly happen in Secret versus OG game.