PUBG Global Championship 2023 becomes the game’s most popular tournament in over four years
The PUBG Global Championship 2023 began on November 18 and concluded its Grand Finals on December 3. The Korean Danawa E-sports team was crowned the ultimate champions, thanks to a clutch 1st-place finish in Round 16.
Chinese rivals 17 Gaming finished only 4 points behind them and came close to victory with a 1st-place finish in the penultimate Round 17, but a poor 14th-place finish in the final round left them behind the ultimate victors.
As we looked at earlier in the event, the event's Group Stage reached the highest peak viewership of any PGC Group Stage ever. The tournament started strong in terms of viewership and kept this going throughout the event, reaching a new height for the Global Championship event series of the discipline.
PGC 2023 peaked during the final round of the Grand Finals, hitting 263.6K Peak Viewers at Round 18. The nail-biting finish between the Chinese and Korean teams had it all up for grabs and fans tuned in to see which would come out ahead.
Viewership for the event consistently increased as the tournament progressed, with the Peak Viewers figure slowly climbing and climbing as the event moved through its Group Stage, Bracket Stage, and Grand Finals. The PGC 2023 became the most popular Global Championship PUBG event ever.
Vietnamese was the most popular language of the event, recording a 54.9% increase compared to PGC 2022 in Peak Viewers. However, other languages were also instrumental in the PGC becoming the most popular PGC event ever. English, Korean, and Russian-language broadcasts recorded significant increases compared to the 2022 event, with Korean recording an astounding 102.9% increase in peak viewership.
On western live-streaming platforms, Chinese-language viewership fell by a significant margin, but the esports discipline is not unpopular in the region. Chinese players made up more than 20% of the total attendees, and viewership from outside of mainland China, such as the PUBG_Taiwan Twitch channel, reached over 5K concurrent viewers.
Compared to the other PUBG Global Championship events, the tournament was the most popular of the event series since 2019. PUBG generally reached its highest viewership during the earlier years of the game’s hype on live-streaming platforms, roughly between 2017 and 2019, but the newest PUBG events are achieving organic growth that shows promise for the esports discipline.
The changes to the PGC for this year featured a simplified Bracket Stage. A more straightforward Playoffs format meant that the event was much shorter than previous iterations of the event, causing the event to achieve roughly 200K Hours Watched less than the 2022 event, despite increasing viewership.
The growing esports scene of PUBG skyrocketed the PGC 2023 to the top-5 most popular PUBG events ever. The PUBG Global Invitational 2018 was the first-ever major international tournament for PUBG, riding off of the game’s success on live-streaming platforms, and this event remains the most popular PUBG tournament.
The Global Invitational was eventually replaced as the biggest event of the year by the Global Championship, the final tournament for a more comprehensive season schedule. PUBG has made great strides in developing a professional esports scene in recent years, and the efforts have been rewarded by the greatest viewership the discipline has seen since 2019.
PUBG suffered the same fate as Fortnite, achieving huge international success thanks to its popularity on live-streaming platforms and internet culture, but this previous popularity now overshadows any organic growth the game is achieving. The PGC 2023 marks a huge achievement for the game’s esports scene, as the discipline starts to rival the viewership it achieved a handful of years ago.
The PGC 2023 becoming one of the top-5 most popular events ever is a sign that the esports discipline is growing and coming into its own, becoming a popular and healthy esports scene without relying on the viewership and popularity of internet celebrities on live-streaming platforms. The 2024 Competitive Season for PUBG will hopefully continue the growth that the 2023 season has shown, as the esports discipline reaches new heights and popularity on its own feet.
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