Most popular esports tournaments in 2022
Esports Charts continues to recap esports in 2022. In our new article, we will analyze the most watched and popular tournaments of the year and compare their results with the results of 2021.
Worlds 2022 became the most watched esports tournament of 2022 by a wide margin based on all viewership metrics. The main LoL tournament amassed nearly 142 million Hours Watched. This is 19% fewer than the previous event had, but the Worlds 2022 Grand Final between T1 and DRX, the first-ever Worlds 2022 event covered by community casters, drew more than 5.1 million Peak Viewers, setting a new League of Legends esports record.
The two seasons of the Indonesian MPL Mobile Legends tournaments — Season 9 and Season 10 — are among the Top 3 most watched tournaments of the year. Each of these championships amassed more than 80 million HW, making them the all-time leaders in the discipline by this metric. It should be noted that the HW gap between this year's Spring and Fall MPL seasons is very small, while the Spring 2021 tournament outpaced the Fall 2021 tournament by 42% of HW.
LCK Spring 2022 is in fourth place with 74.2 million HW, a new record for the Korean league. Compared with the previous year, the Spring Split outpaced all CS:GO tournaments and climbed one place in the ranking. LCK Summer, on the other hand, showed remarkable stability and once, and takes eighth place in our ranking, although its HW went up by almost 10%.
IEM Rio Major 2022 and PGL Major Antwerp 2022 are in 5th-6th places of the ranking, accumulating 69.5 and 68.1 million HW, respectively. They have made it into the Top 3 CS:GO tournaments of all time, just a few percent behind PGL Major Stockholm 2021, the leader in this metric.
Similar to 2021, the only Dota 2 tournament in the Top 10 is The International. TI11 didn't have the best statistics and ranks seventh in our ranking with 67.7 million HW. This is almost 37% fewer compared with TI10, which took second place last year.
VALORANT Champions 2022 became the most watched tournament in the discipline, amassing 60.8 million HW and attracting more than 1.5 million PV. The Valorant main event ranks ninth in the 2022 Top 10 most watched tournaments, one spot higher from last year, and is also in the Top 10 for the first time by PV.
Mid-Season Invitational 2022 rounds out the Top 10 most watched tournaments of the year with 48.2 million HW. The event dropped 21% from last year's Mid-Season Invitational, moving three spots down in the ranking. In addition, the event ranks outside the Top 10 by PV.
All the same major LoL, Mobile Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2 and Valorant tournaments made it into the Top 10 most watched tournaments of the year. The only difference is that 2022 featured two CS:GO majors, not one, and both reached the Top 10. The ML:BB World Championship, ranked sixth last year, is not included in the ranking, as it has not yet been held: it will take place only in January.
In addition to the Mobile Legends events described above, MLBB Southeast Asia Cup 2022 and 31st Southeast Asian Games ML:BB are in the Top 5 tournaments of the year by Peak Viewers. They drew more than 2.8 million and more than 2.2 million concurrent viewers, respectively.
Free Fire World Series 2022 Sentosa, which drew slightly fewer than 1.5 million Peak Viewers, rounds out the Top 10 esports tournaments of the year by Peak Viewers. We should note that last year's World Championship in this "Battle Royale" attracted 5.4 million Peak Viewers, which has become the best total in the history of esports. Worlds 2022 was pretty close to that number, but Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore still retains its record-breaking status.
Other results of 2022
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