On July 30th, the Riyadh Masters 2023 (Dota 2) tournament in Saudi Arabia came to an end. It attracted more viewers than the majors in Lima, Berlin, and Bali, and compared to Riyadh Masters 2022, Peak Viewers increased by 62%.
Riyadh Masters is an international Dota 2 championship held as part of the annual Gamers8 event in Saudi Arabia. In 2023, the prize pool for Riyadh Masters reached $15 million, making it the largest independent tournament of the season. In this aspect, it surpassed all Valve majors and several past tournaments from The International series. Essentially, this tournament served as a final rehearsal before the upcoming world championship in Seattle.
In Riyadh Masters 2023 20 teams from six regions of the Dota Pro Circuit participated. The teams went through a Play-In series and a group stage, after which only 12 participants continued their battle in the double-elimination bracket. Team Spirit became the champion of the tournament, defeating Team Liquid 3-1 in the finals and earning $5 million.
Speaking about the overall results, the teams from Eastern Europe performed very well during Riyadh Masters 2023. Three teams from this region made it into the Top 6, which has not happened in any other Major in the current season. Team Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators, the two strongest teams from Western Europe, secured their usual high placements. Talon Esports, which reached the Top 3, once again proved to be the strongest representative from Southeast Asia this year. As for the other participants, the teams from North and South America showed low performance. The representatives from China also showed a mediocre result, only reaching 7-8th place. It should be noted that last year the Chinese team PGS.LGD was the champion of Riyadh Masters 2022.
Riyadh Masters 2023 Viewership Statistics
Riyadh Masters 2023 statistics
The Riyadh Masters 2023 matches accumulated a little over 30 million Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number for the broadcasts is 202K, with the Peak Viewers number reaching 587.8K people. The most popular match was the Grand Final between Team Liquid and Team Spirit, which was the only series in the entire tournament to have over half a million Peak Viewers.
The tournament games were covered on 44 different channels, including official studio channels and community caster streams. The main languages for the broadcasts were traditionally Russian and English. The broadcasts in Tagalog also had a good result, gathering even more viewers than during The Bali Major 2023. The most popular platform for the tournament was Twitch, generating five times more Hours Watched than YouTube. The difference in Peak Viewers between the two platforms was even greater.
Unlock the infographics along with other exclusive content and features by upgrading to our PRO Subscription.
Most popular teams of the tournament by Average Viewers
Representatives from Western and Eastern Europe, as well as Southeast Asia, made it to the Top 5 most popular teams of the tournament. The leader significantly outperformed other teams in terms of Average Viewers. The difference between the first and second team in this metric was almost 30K viewers.
Comparison of Riyadh Masters 2023 with Other Tournaments
Comparison of Riyadh Masters tournaments
Riyadh Masters 2023 surpassed Riyadh Masters 2022 in all metrics, despite the minimal difference in Average Viewers, with 201.9K and 200.3K people, respectively. Compared to last year, the total Hours Watched tripled, thanks to a larger number of participants and a longer tournament format (the total broadcast time also increased threefold).
When it comes to Peak Viewers, Riyadh Masters 2023 improved upon the previous year's tournament by 62%. Interestingly, for the second year in a row, Team Spirit played against a team from Western Europe in the most popular match of the tournament (and won both times).
Comparison of Riyadh Masters 2023 with DPC 2023 Majors
It is also interesting to compare Riyadh Masters 2023 with the past majors of the Dota Pro Circuit 2023 season. The tournament in Saudi Arabia surpassed all of them in terms of Peak Viewers, receiving about 16% more (approximately 80K viewers) than the ESL One Berlin Major 2023. In terms of total Hours Watched, Riyadh Masters lagged slightly behind The Lima Major, but the difference in terms of Average Viewers was quite significant — during the tournament in Peru, there were 60K more people watching the broadcasts on average.
Riyadh Masters 2023 had the potential to surpass all the majors in terms of Average Viewers, but several factors prevented this. The main factor was the excessively "heavy" format of the tournament. The Average Viewers metric shows how much attention viewers are willing to give to a tournament over a long time-period. The longer the tournament goes on, the lower this metric becomes because viewers simply become physically tired of watching a large number of matches. Riyadh Masters 2023 faced the same situation — the tournament was divided into several stages with a large number of matches that practically had no impact. At times, 4-5 matches could be happening simultaneously, causing confusion among viewers and forcing them to choose what to watch. In other words, matches from the same tournament were competing against each other for an audience, and that is why the Average Viewers metric was not as high as it could have been.
Despite its overloaded format, Riyadh Masters 2023 left a positive impression on both players and viewers. The tournament series has significantly grown compared to last year, and in the future, Riyadh Masters will surely be able to compete with The International championships.
Detailed Esports data at your fingertips.
Subscribe to & start exploring!
