Riyadh Masters solidified itself as one of 2024’s most popular Dota 2 tournaments on only the first day of its Group Stage
The Riyadh Masters 2024 is the third iteration of the annually recurring Dota 2 tournament held in Saudi Arabia, and the event is often one of the most popular Dota 2 tournaments of the year. The 2024 edition began with its Play-In satage on July 4, and the Group Stage kicked off yesterday, July 10. The tournament has already established itself as one of the most popular Dota 2 events of 2024, and viewership will only continue to climb as the event continues.
Riyadh Masters 2024 offers a $5,000,000 prize pool, five times more than the next-highest prize pool of 2024 for the esports title. With such high stakes, some of the world’s best teams have travelled to Saudi Arabia for the event, which is part of the overarching Esports World Cup calendar.
For the 2024 iteration, some minor changes have been made to the event format: the Play-In roughly doubled in length for the 2024 edition, and the Group Stage is slightly longer too. The amount of invited teams remains the same, but the 2024 edition has spread out matches, giving them more room to breathe.
The direct effect of this change was seen on the first day of the Group Stage, which recorded lower watch time but higher concurrent viewership. As matches are spread out, there is less exciting action compacted into each day, but more fans are tuning in to catch the matches.
In total, the first day of the Group Stage recorded 1.89M Hours Watched, a 12.9% decrease compared to the first day of Groups at last year’s Riyadh Masters. The first day of the 2023 Groups was also more than four hours longer than the opening Groups day at the 2024 event, contributing significantly to why watch time has dropped.
Russian and English remain two of Dota 2’s most critical languages for drawing viewership, but Tagalog also entered the top 3 languages of the Group Stage. Dota 2 has been growing in Eastern Asia, especially thanks to the appearance of teams like Blacklist International: entirely Filipino teams holding their own on the international stage.
In regard to concurrent viewership, the 2024 event showed positive dynamics compared to last year’s Riyadh Masters. Peak Viewers grew by over 37.7% to reach 336.8K PV thanks to Team Spirit’s match against Team Falcons. Matches at all editions of the Riyadh Masters Group Stages are held simultaneously; at the 2024 edition, up to four matches are held simultaneously during the Group Stage.
Due to this scheduling decision by the tournament organizers, multiple matches contributed to the total Peak Viewers achieved by the first day of the Groups, but Team Spirit’s match against Team Falcons was far ahead in the lead.
Team Spirit’s match against Team Falcons generated 222.4K Peak Viewers towards the tail-end of the match, as Team Spirit secured a 2-0 victory over the Saudi Arabian esports organization. Playing on home soil, Team Falcons have enjoyed high viewership for most of their matches throughout the event so far.
Falcons’ second match of the opening day against Gaimin Gladiators was another 0:2 loss for the Saudi team, but it recorded 138.5K Peak Viewers, enough to rank as the second-most popular match of the day. Although Falcons are a Saudi organization and Gaimin Gladiators are a Canadian esports organization, both teams feature Russian players, and Russian-language viewership was the largest contributing factor to their peak viewership.
Finally, OG’s match against Team Spirit received 134K Peak Viewers, falling just behind Falcons' game against Gaimin Gladiators. Team Spirit are the current reigning champions of the Riyadh Masters, and OG are one of the teams which may be able to topple their throne and take victory this year. Their match was highly watched and ended in a 1:1 draw, hinting at an exciting playoffs stage for this year’s event.
Although the Group Stage of the Riyadh Masters has already kicked off, Esports Charts collated statistics for this year’s Play-in, to see how it compares to the same stage of the 2023 tournament. Compared to last year’s, the Riyadh Masters 2024 Play-In Stage recorded slightly lower concurrent viewership, although it achieved a much higher watch time.
As aforementioned, the tournament organizers have made efforts to spread out matches and lengthen both the Group and Play-In stages of the 2024 tournament. Although this allowed the 2024 Play-In to record 4.69M Hours Watched, a 40.8% increase compared to last year’s Play-in, average concurrent viewership fell by 18.2% and peak concurrent viewership fell by 11.6%.
In terms of languages, Russian-language viewership increased by 28.3% for this year’s edition and was the only language demographic to record more than 100K concurrent viewers for the 2024 Play-In. English-language viewership fell significantly for the Play-In, although this has turned around during the Group Stage.
Tagalog also overtook Spanish as the third-most-popular language of the Play-In. There are Latin American and Spanish-speaking teams in attendance at this year’s Riyadh Masters, but Spanish-speaking Dota fans seem disinterested in the event so far. On the flip side, Tagalog viewership has increased dramatically thanks to the competitive performance of Blacklist International, who advanced through the Play-In and are currently third in their group for the Group Stage.
Compared to some of the most popular events of the year so far, the Riyadh Masters 2024 event has already established itself as the third most popular event of 2024. As the event continues and advances to its Playoffs, it will only continue to increase its viewership, and it may just become the most popular Dota 2 event of 2024 so far.
Esports Charts will continue to report on the viewership statistics of the Riyadh Masters 2024 Group Stage, and the Playoffs Stage, which begins on July 16. Keep on top of which matches are currently happening with our Schedule tab for the Riyadh Masters 2024, and follow the action live.
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