PMGC 2022 Peak Viewers Numbers Significantly Increased Compared to Last Year's Tournament

The PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2022 ended on January 8 at the Jakarta International Expo in Indonesia. Hundreds of thousands of Battle Royale fans gathered at the broadcasts to see who would win the title of the strongest team of the season. This time, there were even more viewers than last year. See Esports Charts article for more details.

PMGC 2022 participants / Photo: twitter.com/EsportsPUBGM

PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2022 is the final tournament of the PUBG Mobile esports season in 2022. 50 teams competed for a $4 million prize pool. Among the participants were teams from different countries and regions, but most of them were from China and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, etc.), where the title is very popular. The lineups of such well-known clubs as LGD Gaming, Four Angry Men, DAMWON Gaming, FaZe Clan and other organizations played at the tournament.

Most of the tournament (League Stage, Survival Stage and Last Chance Stage) took place in November and December 2022, when the top 16 world teams were determined to compete in the final round. These teams played in the Grand Final on January 6-8. After 18 rounds, the winner of the tournament became S2G Esports from Turkey. Second place went to DRS GAMING from Nepal. For both teams, this achievement was the biggest in their history.

Viewership Statistics

PMGC 2022 Viewership Statistics

PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2022 matches lasted just over 100 hours and accumulated 27.3 million Hours Watched during that time. The Average Viewers numbers at the broadcasts were 272.7K and Peak Viewers numbers were 851.7K which were reached during the final tournament. Compared to the group stage, this metric increased by almost 69%.

During the grand final, the audience reach significantly increased. The reasons for this were not only the upcoming tournament finale, but also various bonuses for viewers. For example, Prime Gaming users received free in-game items for watching the broadcasts. The in-game tokens also became an additional incentive — with their help fans could vote for their favorite team in a special voting, as well as decorate the broadcast chat with various animations. Also, before the start of the PMGC 2022 decisive matches, the audience was entertained by a short concert with the local star singers — Mahalini, Alvin Jo and others. This, as well, helped the tournament to attract a new audience.

In total, PMGC 2022 was broadcast on over 340 channels on various platforms: YouTube accumulated 61.3% of total Hours Watched, FB accounted for 33.6%, and the rest numbers came from TikTok and Twitch. Despite the fact that the tournament had a lot of community casters, the largest audience was attracted by the official PUBG Mobile Indonesia game channels (128.2K Peak Viewers and 4.1 million Hours Watched).

The most popular broadcast language was Indonesian, which accounted for 30.6% of total Hours Watched, and it accumulated 241.4K Peak Viewers. Nepali and English gained 10% each.

Comparison with Other Tournaments

PMGC 2022 tournament took place in the format of one multistage event, where almost all teams competed against each other at once (except Wolves Esports and Alter Ego LIMAX). During PMGC 2021, the format was different — then all competitors began competing in separate West and East leagues, and only then the best teams met in the overall grand final.

PMGC 2022 matches accumulated 27.6 million Hours Watched — that's more than the Eastern League, Western League and PMGC Grand Finals matches together generated in 2021 (about 21.7 million Hours Watched in total). That is a 26% increase in the tournament series by this metric.

If we compare by Peak Viewers numbers, PMGC 2021 League East attracted 386.9K viewers, and during the grand final of the same tournament this metric went up to 646K. PMGC 2022 numbers were also higher here: 505K people watched the most popular match during the group stage of League Stage, and during the grand final the Peak Viewers number went up to 851.7K.

The next tournament in the series has already been announced — PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2023 will be held in November-December 2023 in Turkey. More details about the event will be announced later.