Quake World Championship 2023 — rapha reclaims crown at fifth most popular event in Pro League series
The Quake World Championship 2023 was held from August 10 to August 13 at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. It became the most popular event in the discipline this year while slotting into the second spot for the most-watched table.
America's rapha eased past Hungarian RAISY 4-1 in the Grand Finals of the Playoffs. The winner — part of the Team Liquid roster — pocketed $25K for his efforts, while the runner-up — who represents Myztro Gaming — took home $15K out of the total prize purse of $150K.
Rapha has been an athlete in the discipline since 2002, and he has been one of the pillars of the esport and the Quake Pro League since its run started in 2019. At 34, he has already won nine Quake World Championships (including seven QuakeCon titles) and 20 international duel trophies, alongside notching six team victories.
The Quake World Championship 2023 recorded 10K Peak Viewers during the Playoffs Winners' Finals between RAISY and rapha, which the latter won 3-0. The former had three appearances on the top five matches table, with the tournament winner, vengeurR, and ZenAku having two entries each.
All these five matches came from Day 2 of the Playoffs, as the event approached its conclusion and fans wanted to see who would make the summit clash and who would fall by the wayside. This Quake competition also registered 186K Hours Watched and 6.4K Average Viewers over 29 hours of airtime.
Interestingly, it was advertised and promoted by Steam on the portal's STARFIELD page, thanks to both games sharing the same developer and publisher, Bethesda. However, viewership stats from SteamTV have not been included due to the autoplay feature on the upcoming title's store page, which would have added a few thousand viewers who may not have been relevant to the world championship.
It was a close battle between the two finalists for the tag of the most popular player by average concurrent viewers. However, in the end, and no doubt helped by his victory and two wins over his adversary, rapha edged past RAISY by 100 odd viewers after notching 7.4K AV. Also worth mentioning is that Australia's ZenAku was the joint second most popular alongside the athlete who sent his tumbling down to the Losers' Round 2 after beating him 2-1 in the Quarterfinals of the Playoffs.
Twitch and English were the dominant platform and language, respectively, with both more or less maintaining the same numbers from the Quake World Championship 2022. The official Twitch channel of the game did the heavy lifting when it came to attracting viewers to the tournament, with some help coming from its YouTube handle and Bethesda's account on the purple platform.
For anyone looking for comparisons, the Quake World Championship 2023 was not the most successful event in the discipline by any metric. However, it continues to pull in a similar number of viewers year-on-year thanks to the goodwill the game and its ancient esports scene have built up over the decades.
Most of Quake's most successful competitions came in the period between 2017 and 2019, but when looking at the Quake Pro League alone, it finished as the fifth most popular in the series. The Quake World Championship 2020 is the leader on this list, while the Quake Pro League Season 4 from earlier this year is the most watched.
Quake has created quite the niche spot for itself in the esports industry, with the same e-athletes being seen at its bigger tournaments, including the world championship. This list includes the likes of k1llsen, vengeurR, rapha, RAISY, and maxter. In the fourth season of its Quake Pro League guise, the discipline has managed to remain relevant and conduct the most viewed competition in the series, so there are certain directions that the organizers can work towards to help it maintain and perhaps grow its dedicated fanbase.
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