PGL Major Copenhagen Opening Stage received similar viewership to Paris Major despite high regional community support
Counter-Strike 2’s first-ever Major tournament, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, started its Opening Stage on March 17. Throughout the four days of matches and eliminations, viewers from around the world tuned in to catch a glimpse of the evolving global competitive stage. Viewership for the event has been stable so far and will surely increase for the Elimination Stage where many global fan-favourites will debut at the event.
No teams were directly invited to the Major this time, as Valve preferred to have all teams compete and qualify through RMR events with the newly reset competitive scene following the release of CS2. Of the 24 teams that qualified through these regional events, 8 were directly invited to the Elimination Stage based on Valve’s Regional Standings, rather than their results at the RMR events.
For example, Cloud9 qualified for the Major with a 3-0 record, outperforming teams like Team Spirit and Team Vitality in the same RMR. However, the latter two teams received invites to the Elimination Stage, whereas Cloud9 had to battle through the Opening Stage. This has slightly stacked viewership against the Opening Stage, as the world’s best and most popular teams did not compete during the stage.
Nevertheless, viewership for the Opening Stage was nothing to scoff at, and it recorded over 15.48M Hours Watched.
The 15.48M HW generated by the Opening Stage does represent a 14.5% decrease in watch time compared to the previous Major, however, the ongoing PGL Major featured far fewer broadcasting hours. In terms of average concurrent viewership, the Copenhagen Major received 420.3K Average Viewers, which marked a negligible 0.7% increase in viewership for the stage.
The English-language viewership for the stage has been far lower than during previous major events. Compared to last year’s Paris Major, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 received a peak English-language viewership 40.4% lower at only 244.7K PV. This figure is more representative of a lower interest in the Opening Stage from global audiences than a decreasing English-language audience, and as the Elimination Stage and eventual Playoffs progress, English-language viewership will likely rise significantly.
Both Portuguese and Russian-language broadcasts enjoyed significant increases in viewership compared to the previous Major. The reason for an 81.2% increase in Russian language viewership is likely due to the rise of national teams within the competitive scene lately. Cloud9 has been performing strongly since the beginning of 2024, and their success has built them a decent following among fans.
Team Spirit is also one of Counter-Strike’s most popular teams at the moment after their, and specifically donk’s, dominant performance at IEM Katowice 2024. The team’s debut during the Elimination Stage will likely bring an even larger increase in Russian-language viewership.
Both Mongolian and Polish broadcasts have also shown significant growth in viewership coming into the new Counter-Strike era. Mongolian broadcasts growing in popularity coincides with the mono-national Mongolian The MongolZ surpassing the expectations of many. The team has even qualified for the Elimination Stage. At 30K Peak Viewers, the tournament set a new Counter-Strike viewership record for the language, and this may even be broken once again during the next stage.
Polish language broadcasts have enjoyed a boost thanks to ENCE’s competitive success, as more and more fans return to supporting a team full of compatriots, but all of the Polish viewership stemmed from one particular community caster, which we will explore further below.
It is important to note that Portuguese-language statistics do include Brazilian-Portuguese, as this is included under the Portuguese umbrella on many live-streaming platforms. Portuguese-language broadcasts were the most popular of the entire stage, recording 326K Peak Viewers. Multiple Brazilian teams and a Portuguese team attended the event, and with paiN Gaming, Imperial Esports, and FURIA Esports all advancing to the next stage this viewership will only continue to rise.
The Opening Stage of the Major was dominated by Portuguese-language viewership, and unsurprisingly, all of the most popular matches of the stage featured a Brazilian team. Imperial against ENCE was the most popular match, opening to 633.4K Peak Viewers on Day 1 of the stage. ENCE enjoyed extremely high average viewership throughout the stage, but it is hard to say if this was due to their own popularity or the sizeable Brazilian audience, as three of their four games were against Brazilian teams.
ENCE’s match against FURIA on Day 3 of the stage was the second-most popular match, having received 589.5K Peak Viewers. FURIA are generally more popular than Imperial so far in this event, but the Day 1 viewership for Imperial’s match against ENCE was significantly higher as fans excitedly tuned in for the Major’s debut day.
Finally, the third most popular match of the day was between Portuguese team SAW and Brazilian rivals FURIA. The match was ideal for Portuguese-language viewership, and it received 576.3K Peak Viewers thanks to a large amount of support from these broadcasts. Community casters are usually a crucial part of the Portuguese-language viewership for any Counter-Strike event, and this Major is no different.
Gaules was the most popular channel to broadcast the Opening Stage of the Copenhagen Major. The Brazilian community caster got involved in a dispute with PGL and BTS Brasil as the latter was given the official Brazilian-Portuguese broadcasting rights to the Major, and it was rumoured that Gaules would be excluded from streaming. Gaules was eventually given the green light to stream and he did not disappoint: he received 207.6K Peak Viewers for his coverage of FURIA’s game against SAW.
The official PGL broadcasts were the second, fourth, and fifth most popular channels to broadcast the tournament, receiving 105.9K, 60.6K, and 57.4K Peak Viewers respectively. The PGL Twitch channel earned its peak viewership thanks to Cloud9’s match against SAW, and the B-stream PGL_CS2 received 60.6K PV during Ecstatic’s match against Imperial.
Finally, Polish community caster IzakOOO was middle of the table thanks to 73.5K Peak Viewers recorded on his personal Twitch channel. He was by far the most popular Polish-language broadcaster of the event, and he reached his peak viewership while watching ENCE’s game against Imperial. Although ENCE is a Finnish esports organisation, four of its current players are Polish, and IzakOOO and his fans were proudly supporting them on stream. He also was simulcasting to YouTube Live during the event, and combining the viewership of both his streams he reached well over 110K concurrent viewers.
The PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 continues with its Elimination Stage. The matches have already begun and the tournament page for the event will be updated continuously as the games proceed and the 16 teams are whittled down to only 8 for the later Playoffs Stage.
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