Red Bull Wololo in Age of Empires II: the results of the series

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Age of Empires II is an iconic RTS game. Earlier, we’ve talked about the discipline’s overall performance on streaming platforms, as well as the situation regarding its esports scene. Today, we will take a closer look at the Wololo tournament series from Red Bull in Age of Empires II.

Red Bull began running the Wololo Series in April 2020. Players were selected for the tournament through participating in qualifiers. The first prize fund was $21K, and starting with the Red Bull Wololo II it grew to $30K. The size of the prize fund for the fifth Red Bull Wololo has reached a mark that is downright phenomenal for the discipline: $100K.

Comparing the Wololo tournaments with each other shows that the series had a fairly good start in terms of performance despite the onset of the pandemic. The second season did not generate as much interest and showed the worst results for the series.

It should be noted that, although the production value improved with each new season, all tournaments were held in an online format. At Red Bull Wololo V, the organizers have turned the game around by hosting a spectator-free LAN tournament. Offline events for Age of Empires II are somewhat of a rarity, given the pandemic. However, this particular competition was broadcast from Heidelberg Castle in Germany.

Players chose the factions and maps for battles using a real map in the pavilion, while the interviewers were dressed in medieval costumes. Between matches, the participants played chess and also gave interviews at different thematic locations. This level of preparation allowed Red Bull Wololo V to become the most successful tournament in the series, with viewers generating 1.6M Hours Watched over 58 hours of airtime.

The match between TheViper and Liereyy became the most popular one and attracted 77K Peak Viewers. The viewers were also interested in this match because TheViper has spent a long time without scoring any victories at the Age of Empires II tournaments – and yet now he managed to get to the finals and proceeded to occupy the #1 spot. Because of this, the mark of 77K viewers was reached and became a new record for the discipline as a whole.

At the moment, Red Bull Wololo V is the most popular tournament in the history of the Age of Empires II esports scene in terms of Peak Viewers

The Hidden Cup from the streamer T90Official is a direct rival of Red Bull Wololo. The core idea of the Hidden Cup is that the audience remains in the dark regarding who plays which character until the very end of the tournament. While the Red Bull Wololo series leads among all Age of Empires II tournaments in terms of Peak Viewers, the Hidden Cup is leading in terms of Hours Watched. (Hidden Cup 4 generated 1.7M Hours Watched, exceeding the result of Red Bull Wololo V by 3%).

Most popular Age of Empires II tournaments by Hours Watched

Who watched Red Bull Wololo events and where?

We’ve taken a look at the audience for the Red Bull Wololo streams. 66% of the Hours Watched were generated by the viewers of English-language broadcasts, while the viewers of the Spanish-language broadcasts were responsible for 23% more. Twitch was responsible for most of the Hours Watched (70%), with the rest belonging to YouTube (29%).

The most popular players of the Red Bull Wololo series

The top was composed based on total Hours Watched for the tournaments of the Red Bull Wololo series, excluding the qualifiers.

Kai "Liereyy" Kallinger has taken the lead in the Red Bull series in terms of Hours Watched – claiming the first spots on the first and fourth at Red Bull Wololo. In total, he generated 1.3M Hours Watched. Following him is Ørjan “TheViper” Larsen with 1.2M Hours Watched. He went without winning tournaments for almost half a year, but took the first spot at the last Red Bull Wololo V and was awarded $26K.

The fifth Red Bull Wololo showed that the discipline is attractive to the viewers and can perform better than before, while the strong production value combined with historical surroundings allows attracting more and more attention of the broadcast viewers.

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