Magic World Championship 2023 falls short in viewership compared to the mid-season events of the same year
Magic World Championship XXIX was hosted from the 22nd to the 24th of September this year and marks the 29th World Championship for the popular Magic: The Gathering card game. In recent years, the event organisers have been spending a lot more on the Magic: The Gathering esports scene and this year boasted a $1,000,000 USD prize pool for the championship event. With the increase in effort and money going into the esports discipline, has viewership risen accordingly?
The Magic World Championship is the final event of the Pro Tour season for 22-23 and brought over 100 players to Las Vegas in the United States. The top eight players are the event receive an invitation to compete in the Pro Tour and World Championship of next season, and the winning player receives an entire $100,000. Not only does the World Championship have a large prize pool to boast of, but the three Pro Tour events throughout the year also host a half-million-dollar prize pool each.
Magic World Championship XXIX Viewership
In total, the Magic World Championship brought in 462K hours of watch time across only 24 hours of broadcasting. The event was short and sweet with all the action packed into a single weekend. Having a concise broadcasting schedule can be positive for viewership, as fans may find it more approachable to watch a large amount of Magic: The Gathering packed into a one-weekend event rather than spread across multiple weeks.
All of the most popular matches for the event were the matches of the final day of the event as the tournament came to a close. The most popular of these was the final match between Depraz and Kosaka. Depraz came out ahead of his competitors, claiming $100,000 in prize pool and becoming the 9th ever Frenchman to win a Magic World Championship.
While viewership for the event was stable, it was lower watch time than some of the prestigious Pro Tour events during 2023. With the revamp of the Magic Pro Tour in recent years, higher significance has been given to the mid-season Pro Tour events, and their prize pools are representative of this. Pro Tour events in 2023 were hosted with a $500,000 prize pool each, and viewership was up for these mid-season tournaments.
The most-watched event of 2023 was the opening Pro Tour tournament of the year. The $500,000 prize pool matched the prize pool of the 2022 Magic World Championship, which received lower viewership than all events of 2023. It seems the change to the system and investment into mid-season tournaments has brought more consistent viewership throughout the year to the Magic: The Gathering esports scene.
However, one downside of these new prestigious mid-season events is that players’ interest in viewing these esports events waned as the year progressed. Viewership for the mid-season and ultimate Championship events slowly dropped as the year progressed, and the final Championship event was only able to beat the final mid-season event in terms of watch time. Although the new changes brought more consistent viewership throughout the year, this was at the cost of watch time towards the end of the year.
Magic World Championships Viewership Comparison
Comparing this year's Championship event to the World Championships of previous years with the help of Esports Charts tournament database, we can access this year’s viewership with a clearer focus and comparative assistance.
Viewership of recent Magic World Championship events, by Hours Watched & Peak Viewers
Looking at the recent World Championship events for Magic: The Gathering, it seems that 2020 was the most successful year for the card game in terms of online viewership. The 2020 World Championship was the second-most-watched Magic event in our database, bested only by the Mythic Invitational 2019, which boasted a total 2.2M hours of watch time.
In terms of peak concurrent viewership for these events, 2020 was again the most dominant of these events. The 2021 event followed the same downturn in Peak Viewers as it did in Hours Watched, but one event stands out in the PV graphic. The 2023 World Championship event was able to draw in more Peak Viewers than the previous edition, giving hope to fans that the new format may catch on and bring viewers back to the Magic Pro Tour.
The 2020 event perhaps benefitted from being the only World Championship in the earlier half of the year. As we looked at in our comparison of the 2023 events, events earlier in the year were more likely to receive higher viewership, and this could be true for 2020 as well. 2020 was the only year in recent history that the World Championship was able to break 1M hours of watch time, and the abnormal scheduling of the event may have had a part to play in this.
Although things look to be on a downturn for Magic, it isn’t an entirely shrinking area of esports viewership. The mid-season events for 2023 received higher viewership than the events of previous years, and the investment into these may have diluted the viewership for the World Championship slightly. Although the viewership has not grown since the 2020 peak in watch time, the organisers of the Pro League are making a decided effort to keep the scene alive, healthy, and growing.
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