The PGL Wallachia Season 2 was held as an offline affair at the PGL Studio in Bucharest, Romania, from October 4 to 13. It was a historic tournament for Dota 2 in South America, which finally found its first LAN champion in the game after going through a hard-fought Grand Final.
The world's 11 top teams, who received direct invitations, were joined by five teams from the various qualifier events to battle for a prize purse of $1 million. After around ten days of action, Heroic beat Team Falcons 3:1 to make history as South America's first-ever Dota champion. The continent had seen two other teams reach a Grand Final but lost both times.
Heroic created history as South America's first Dota 2 LAN champion (Image via PGL)
The PGL Wallachia Season 2 recorded 320K Peak Viewers during the Grand Final, which carried the added edge of Heroic seeking to right its earlier loss to Team Falcons in the Upper Bracket Final. The event also registered 11.36M Hours Watched and 95.77 Average Viewers over 119 hours of airtime.
Heroic made its competitive Dota 2 debut earlier this year after signing a South American roster. One season in this region was all it took for the side to make its TI bow, where it fell in the Lower Bracket Round 1 of the Playoffs to Southeast Asian side Aurora Gaming.
PGL Wallachia Season 2 – basic viewership stats and most popular matches
It was a close call for the tag of most popular side, but one esports organization was able to emerge on top at the end by around 4,000 average spectators. The top two were also ahead by a distance when it came to attracting viewers to their matches, perhaps pointing to the lack of star names compared to the PGL Wallachia Season 1.
The first season of the new series from PGL boasted names like Team Spirit, BetBoom Team, Team Liquid, and Gaimin Gladiators, among the more popular names on the competitive Dota 2 circuit. Their absence this time around, having decided to take a break so soon after the year's biggest event, the TI 2024, affected the viewership dynamics.
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There would also have been viewer fatigue from the most prominent and coveted event on the annual Dota 2 calendar. Combined with the lack of big names participating, this would have meant lesser audience reach than the first iteration of this PGL series.
Moving to languages, compared to the first season, Russian saw a decrease in its cumulative watch time as it had fewer representatives participating. English went the other way, helped by the performances of beastcoast and nouns, which finished within the top six.
Among the broadcasting platforms, Kick was the big mover, witnessing rises of 2177.2% and 948.5% in its watch time and peak concurrent viewership, respectively. Apart from the official pgldota channel, it was Spanish-speaking streamer and ex-pro benjaz who mainly contributed to this growth, no doubt driven by Heroic's success.
Most popular and watched Dota 2 tournaments in 2024
Looking at the Dota 2 tournaments held this year, the PGL Wallachia Season 2 made the top eight of the HW and PV leaderboards. The International 2024 leads on both counts, with the PGL Wallachia Season 1 settling into second on the peak online viewers table.
To conclude, the PGL Wallachia Season 2 was the first competition of the new season, which also meant roster changes were imminent. The shuffling of players by multiple teams was also a major reason for their withdrawals from the event, even leading to it getting a Tier-2 tag as opposed to the Tier-1 label the first season received.
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