RLCS 2021-22 World Championship — French triumph at the most popular tournament in the Rocket League history

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RLCS World Championship is the centerpiece of Rocket League's competitive season and it is finally back on the esports scene this year with a full-fledged world championship. For the past two years, the organizers have not held a single inter-regional LAN final, as the coronavirus situation did not allow it. Instead of the final tournament, the participants played in the regional finals, which greatly lowered the interest of the audience in such competitions.

In 2022, the situation with the pandemic improved a bit, and Psyonix was able to organize a real holiday for Rocket League fans. The Rocket League Championship Series 2021-22 was the largest tournament in the company's history with as many as 24 teams from seven regions competing for a total prize pool of $2M. For comparison, the last full season (which took place in December 2019) featured only 12 teams and a prize pool of only $530K.

  Team BDS are the world champions of 2021/2022 season | photo: Rocket League Esports   

RLCS 2021-22 World Championship ended on August 14 in the US city of Fort Worth. The participants of the World Championship were selected based on the regional ranking: the best teams were distributed between the Wild Card stage and the group stage. In the final stage, the eight strongest teams made it to the single-elimination bracket. Among these was Moist Esports, owned by the popular American streamer Cr1TiKaL, as well as Karmine Corp., founded by the French streamer Kamet0. The final top 8 teams also included FURIA Esports, Team BDS, G2 Esports, NRG Esports, FaZe Clan, and Version1.

On the way to the final, Team BDS defeated Karmine Corp and FURIA Esports, while G2 Esports prevailed over NRG and FaZe Clan. In the final match at the packed Dickies Arena, the BDS team defeated G2 Esports with a score of 4:1. For the victory in the tournament, the champions were awarded $600K, while their opponents in the final earned $400K. For BDS, this victory was the largest in the team’s entire history. Previously, it has taken the first spot in the seasonal majors, but the prize pools at that time were incomparable (up to $90K for the first spot).

RLCS 2021-22 viewership statistics

The RLCS 2021-22 World Championship matches have generated over 10.1M Hours Watched. The broadcasts gathered 154.3 Average Viewers and 368K Peak Viewers. The most popular match was the one between FURIA Esports and Moist Esports in the playoffs. Karmine Corp. was the team that attracted the most attention with 1.76M Hours Watched. The top 3 by this indicator also included Team BDS and Spacestation Gaming.

The most popular broadcast languages at the tournament were English (326K Peak Viewers) and French (99.9K Peak Viewers). Coming third, far behind the leaders, was Portuguese (9.7K). The majority of viewers followed the matches on Twitch, which gathered 335K Peak Viewers as compared to YouTube’s 36.9K.

The league's most popular channel was the official rocketleague Twitch channel with 259.1K Peak Viewers. The second and third spots were taken by community streamers and owners of the teams participating in the tournament: the Kamet0 broadcast gathered 71.8K Peak Viewers, while the CR1TIKAL stream was watched by up to 46.5K Peak Viewers.

Top-5 Rocket League tournaments

The RLCS 2021-22 World Championship has become the most popular tournament in Rocket League history by all major metrics. It scored twice as many Hours Watched as the second most watched event: RLCS 2021-22 Fall Split Major. It likewise took the lead by Peak Viewers, with the 2022 World Championship exceeding the previous best result by 31%.

More detailed tournament statistics for Rocket League and other disciplines are available with the Esports Charts PRO subscription, the benefits of which can be checked here.