PUBG Global Championship 2025: game's most-watched event in four years

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The PUBG United 2025, a month-long esports festival that also featured the season-ending tournaments for PUBG (PC) and PUBG Mobile, concluded over the weekend in Bangkok. This first-of-its-kind setup was quite a success for both events, with the PC version emerging as the title's most-watched competition in around four years.

The PUBG Global Championship 2025 brought together the world's top 33 sides as they battled for the title of world champion. The game's most prestigious tournament also carried a hefty prize pool of $1.5 million, including $500,000 for the winner.

  FULL SENSE became the first Thai side to win PUBG's biggest trophy (Image via FULL SENSE on X)   

After around two weeks of intense battle royale action, FULL SENSE took home the ultimate crown with 155 points. Having entered the competition in the Grand Finals as the invited host team, the Thai side went on a tear, winning four rounds and earning two more podium places.

  PUBG Global Championship 2025: Basic viewership stats and most popular matches   

This PUBG Global Championship series event peaked at 488,957 Peak Viewers (PV) during the final round on Day 3 of the Grand Finals. This was when FULL SENSE's world championship victory, on its debut appearance, was assured despite a ninth-place finish, ensuring Thailand became the last nation to win this prestigious tournament.

This made it PUBG's sixth most popular competition of all time, with the leader being the PUBG Nations Cup 2025. This international tournament was immensely popular thanks to an international audience that saw over 400 total broadcasters (official & co-streamers) and special attention from Asian viewers.

Most popular and watched PUBG tournaments

The PUBG Global Championship 2025 also notched 7.5 million Hours Watched (HW), the battle royale shooter's highest figures since the 2021 Global Championship, over 55 hours of airtime. As a result, it finished among the title's four most consistently watched events by Average Viewers (AV).

Like the PUBG Nations Cup 2025, the 2025 Global Championship also found a truly international audience. It was covered by a whopping 320 channels across ten platforms, with YouTube and Twitch emerging as the most preferred names by watch time.

Vietnamese audiences continued to show their importance to the game as the language finished as the event's most popular one. With 3.2 million HW, it also contributed over 43% to the PGC 25's overall watch time figures.

Viewers from Thailand also showed high interest as they supported not only FULL SENSE's journey but also other local sides like eArena, Theerathon Five and Made in Thailand. In fact, the Thai language achieved new PUBG esports records on both TikTok and YouTube.

Most crucially, PUBG, which has enjoyed a boom in viewership numbers for the past two years, saw its last two world championships post almost identical HW and PV figures. The game is slowly finding a stable audience after years of struggles competing with not just other shooters but its own mobile counterpart.

In essence, the PUBG United 2025 was a roaring success for the organizers as both world championships pulled in record numbers. It was able to spotlight both the PC and mobile versions separately, while keeping audiences engaged throughout, and the organizers will be hoping that this will become more of a norm in the coming years.