The results of DreamHack Valencia 2022: Halo and StarCraft II tournaments couldn't stand up to CS:GO

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The DreamHack Valencia 2022 gaming festival was held in Spain on July 1-3. Gamers from all over the world gathered at the Fira València exhibition complex to play in a large LAN zone, visit entertainment stands from event sponsors and enjoy esports matches.

Tournament operator DreamHack has been hosting events around the world for many years. This celebration of gaming and esports was born in Jönköping and Stockholm, Sweden, more than ten years ago – but over time, the geography of events expanded to other European cities and even reached North America, Brazil, and India. Typically, such events function in the format of open-space festivals, where you can come for several days with your laptop, play with friends on LAN servers, as well as visit thematic competitions, exhibitions, and concerts.

The DreamHack series are characterized by esports tournaments in numerous disciplines. Moreover, competitions for amateurs and pro players are often held simultaneously. Valencia has been hosting DreamHack tournaments since 2011, and the championships have only been interrupted during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2022, DreamHack Valencia 2022 hosted four international esports tournaments in CS:GO, StarCraft II, and Halo.

56 players from all over the world took part in the DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia StarCraft II tournament, but as usual, the winning spots went to South Korea. In the final, Dark defeated Maru with a score of 4:3 and earned $15K. Note that this tournament is part of the ESL Pro Tour series, which means that the winner also received a ticket to the IEM Katowice 2023 World Championship, which will be held in Poland.

In terms of views, the broadcasts of DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia generated 670K Hours Watched. This is slightly below the European stage of DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia: Europe (849K Hours Watched) but above the Korean league 2022 GSL Season 1 Code S (318.7K Hours Watched).

Valencia also hosted the HCS 2022 Europe Regional Championship this year. In the final, the Acend team defeated players from Quadrant with a score of 4:3 and earned $36K. The four best teams of the tournament (including Natus Vincere and JLINGZ esports) received quotas for Halo Championship Series 2022: Orlando, which will be held in the United States on September 23-25.

In terms of audience coverage, HCS in Valencia showed relatively modest results: 389K Hours Watched, 26.3K Peak Viewers, and 13.1K Average Viewers. With such figures, it did not even enter the top 10 tournaments in the history of the discipline. The thing about the Halo pro scene is that the game is much more popular in the US than in Europe. To compare, DreamHack Anaheim 2022, which took place in February, generated more than 2M Hours Watched and 114K Peak Viewers.

In addition to Halo and StarCraft II, Valencia also hosted men's and women's CS:GO tournaments. Men participated in ESL Challenger at DreamHack Valencia 2022, where eight participants competed for a total prize pool of $100K. In the final, the local Movistar Riders team beat the Russian Outsiders 2:1 and earned $50K. In addition to money, the champions were also awarded the right to play at ESL Pro League Conference Season 17, where they will fight for a spot in ESL Pro League Season 17.

In terms of viewership, the ESL Challenger in Valencia generated almost 1.4M Hours Watched and 91.5K Peak Viewers. Interestingly, the tournament’s most popular matches were the ones with the participation of Brazilian teams, and the broadcast in Portuguese showed the highest viewership numbers (70K Peak Viewers). Otherwise, the figures for the Spanish tournament were a little lower than it was at DreamHack Open November 2021 and almost two times lower than at DreamHack Open June 2021 North America.

ESL Impact Valencia 2022 was the second of three major women's CS:GO tournaments that ESL has planned to host in 2022. The best rosters from Europe, the USA, and Brazil fought for the prize fund of $120K. In the final, the girls from Nigma Galaxy defeated their rivals from FURIA Esports with a score of 2:0 and earned $50K.

The women's CS:GO tournament generated around 285K Hours Watched and 54.7K Peak Viewers. As in the men's tournament, the most popular matches among women featured Brazilian teams, and the broadcast in Portuguese was far ahead of all other streams in terms of viewership (52.5K Peak Viewers).

Interestingly, the same teams played in the finals of the first ESL Impact tournament in Dallas, which resulted in a sound increase in the audience coverage of the event: 908K Hours Watched and 105K Peak Viewers. The only thing that remained unchanged was the leadership of the Portuguese broadcast.

DreamHack Valencia 2022 tournaments comparison

All in all, it should be noted that the most popular event at DreamHack Valencia 2022 was the men's CS:GO tournament. It bypassed the women's championship almost five times in terms of Hours Watched. A comparison of the tournaments’ Peak Viewers yields no significant difference, but the shooter from Valve is confidently ahead of other disciplines.

Detailed statistics on all major esports tournaments are available with the Esports Charts PRO subscription, the benefits of which can be checked here.