The PUBG Nations Cup 2023 has become the game’s most popular tournament of the year

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PUBG Nations Cup 2023, a world championship for the popular battle royale game PUBG featuring national All-Stars teams, concluded in Seoul on September 17th. The event featured an active community casting across a variety of platforms, attracting over 230K Peak Viewers. This was the game’s best result in 2023 but not the best in the history of the discipline.

A total of 16 teams from around the world participated in the PUBG Nations Cup 2023, with four representatives from each of the four major regions: Americas, Asia, Europe, and Asia Pacific. A unique aspect of the tournament was that players who represented their countries were chosen through national voting, with only professional esports players from these countries eligible to vote (the selection concept was modified in some countries). Another distinctive feature was the tournament map pool: it was the first tournament to introduce Vikendi as an official competitive map, alongside the first tournament featuring the Miramar Sandstorm version.

South Korean team claimed the title this year

The winner of PUBG Nations Cup 2023 was determined based on the results of 18 rounds in which teams earned rating points for kills and placements. The champion was the South Korean team, represented by players from the Danawa e-sports and Veronica7 teams, who managed to accumulate 172 points and secure 106 kills. The top three also included the national teams of the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

PUBG Nations Cup 2023 Viewership Statistics

The PUBG Nations Cup 2023 tournament occurred from September 15th to 17th at the Sangam Colosseum venue. The total broadcast time amounted to nearly 15 hours. The event's matches garnered 1.8M Hours Watched, with 122.2К Average Viewers and 230.7K Peak Viewers. It can be summarized that in terms of the last two indicators, the recent Nations Cup essentially mirrored the results of the previous year's tournament. 

In addition to the official channels, the tournament also had a significant community casting presence, with a total of 136 channels on 8 different platforms covering the matches. Including both international platforms like Twitch and YouTube, as well as local ones like AfreecaTV and Naver Esports.

It's important to note that while watching the PUBG Nations Cup 2023 streams, viewers had the opportunity to receive Twitch Drops worth 30.000 EP (Esports Points). To do this, they needed to watch 240 minutes (or 4 hours) of the tournament broadcast. These points could be spent in the esports store.

Comparison of PUBG Nations Cup 2023 with previous tournaments

PUBG Nations Cup 2023 ranked third among all events in the series, trailing behind tournaments in 2019 and 2022. If we look at the trend, it's worth noting that the audience reach of the event was significantly higher before the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to 2019, the average number of viewers on the broadcasts decreased by almost half. The peak online viewership also saw a substantial decline.

Most popular PUBG tournaments by Peak Viewers

PUBG Nations Cup 2023 ranked sixth among all tournaments in terms of peak online viewership. The leader in this category remains PUBG Global Invitational 2018, which attracted 759.5K Peak Viewers.

Most popular PUBG tournaments in 2023

Overall, it can be said that the top tournaments for classic PUBG continue to reach a ceiling in peak online viewership. Over the past three years, none of them has managed to exceed 239K Peak Viewers. 

Currently, the PUBG Nations Cup series is the most popular in its discipline. In recent years, it has even surpassed the PUBG Global Championship and PUBG Global Series in terms of viewership numbers. This situation is quite unusual for esports in general, as team-based disciplines often attract the largest audiences with mixed teams. In games like CS:GO and Valorant, there are very few squads where players represent a single country. Consequently, national team competitions are rarely held there and don't enjoy significant popularity.