Riyadh Masters 2023 Play-In Viewership Statistics

The number of viewers at the Play-In stage of the Riyadh Masters 2023 Dota 2 tournament is at a lower level than that of the group stage of the Riyadh Masters 2022. The current tournament with a prize pool of $15 million is still slightly behind its predecessor with $4 million. Esports Charts has prepared interim viewership statistics for the event.

The Play-In matches took place on July 19 and 20 — in this stage, 12 teams competed for 8 spots in the main group stage of the tournament. Team Aster and Team Liquid emerged as the top teams in Group A, while Quest Esports and Xtreme Gaming secured direct spots in Group B. Four more spots were determined through playoff matches among the remaining participants in the groups, with TSM, OG, 9Pandas, and Team Secret earning those places.

One interesting moment from the Play-In stage was the situation with Execration and Virtus.pro — the teams ended up with the same number of points in their group and shared the 5-6 place. To determine their opponent in the playoff match, they had to play a 1vs1 on Shadow Fiend against each other. The Execration player proved to be stronger, resulting in Virtus.pro taking the last 6th place in the group. In the end, Virtus.pro lost the derby against 9Pandas in the playoff matches, and Execration was defeated by Team Secret.

Riyadh Masters 2023 Play-In Viewership Statistics

In total, the Play-In matches accumulated 3.4 million Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number on the broadcasts was 140.7K, with the Peak Viewers number reaching 235K. The most popular series of the stage was between OG and Entity, which was watched by over 115K Peak Viewers.

It is worth noting that the viewership statistics for the Riyadh Masters 2023 Play-In stage were lower than that of the group stage of the Riyadh Masters 2022 — back then, the AV number on the broadcasts was 179.6K, with the PV number recorded at 304.8K. However, it should be mentioned that the prize pool for Riyadh Masters 2023 amounts to $15 million, which is nearly four times larger than that of Riyadh Masters 2022.

Riyadh Masters 2023 is the largest tournament of the year, excluding The International 2023, so why did the number of viewers turn out to be so low? There are several reasons, but the main one is the inconvenient broadcast format. During the Play-In stage, matches were simultaneously streamed on five channels, which dispersed the attention of the fans. Many matches could have gathered a much larger audience if they didn't have to share viewers with other series.

The group stage of Riyadh Masters 2023 takes place from July 21 to 24. Sixteen teams are competing in two groups, playing a round-robin series (best-of-2). The Top 4 teams from each group will advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs. Teams in 5th-6th place will play in the lower bracket, while the remaining participants will be eliminated from the tournament.