RLCS 2022-23 Fall Split Major: how many viewers did the first major of the new season gather?

RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major became the first major of the new Rocket League esports season. The tournament showed a rather modest audience reach, and in some metrics lagged behind last year's 1st major by almost twice. Esports Charts summarizes the results of the event and tells what could have affected the decrease in viewership.

Tournament results

Like previous Majors, RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major featured the best teams from seven regions: Europe, North America, South America, Oceania, Asia, MENA, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Among the participants of RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major there were many teams of famous clubs: Team Liquid, Team Secret, Gen.G Mobi1 Racing, FaZe Clan, G2 Esports, and others. This number also includes teams owned by popular streamers — Karmine Corp and Moist Esports.

The trio from Gen.G Mobi1 Racing won the tournament, defeating Moist Esports 4:2 in the final. It should be reminded that Moist Esports were the champions of RLCS 2021-22 - Spring Split Major, whereas for Gen.G Mobi1 Racing this victory has so far become the biggest achievement in the team’s history. The Gen.G tag itself came to the Rocket League relatively recently — in September 2022, signing the Stormtroopers roster.

Viewership statistics

Statistics of RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major

RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major matches generated almost 2.7M Hours Watched and attracted more than 80K Average Viewers. The mark of 180.9K Peak Viewers was reached not in the grand final, but in the playoff match between Moist Esports vs. Karmine Corp. Such popularity is not surprising, because both clubs are owned by popular streamers with large communities of their own.

It was Moist Esports that became the most watched team of the tournament, generating 986K Hours Watched. The same team took the lead by Average Viewers of the matches, gathering 111.7K of them.

The most popular broadcast language of RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major was English (75.9% of total Hours Watched). The top 3 also included French (19.1%) and Spanish (2.2%). In terms of platforms, Twitch accounted for 91.4% of total Hours Watched, with the remaining 8.6% coming from YouTube.

37 channels participated in the coverage of RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major. The most popular of these was the official rocketleague channel on Twitch, which generated 1.5M Hours Watched and more than 100.7K Peak Viewers. The top 3 by Peak Viewers also included the French streamer Kamet0, the owner of Karmine Corp, as well as the American streamer Moistcr1tikal, the founder of Moist Esports.

Comparison with other tournaments

Comparison of Fall Split Major in 2021 and 2022

Compared to other tournaments, the RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major gathered a significantly smaller audience than the autumn major of last season. Then the Peak Viewers indicator amounted to 280.2K, and this year it did not exceed 180.1K. The situation with Average Viewers is similar: 150.2K last year, compared to 80K in 2022, which is almost a two-fold drop.

RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major became the weakest major of the current calendar year, losing in terms of audience coverage to all the major tournaments of the last season. And there is a good reason for this: the Rocket League tournament coincided with the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It is already quite difficult to compete with such a major event for the attention of the audience, but in this case, there is also a clear overlap of interests among the audience. RLCS 2022-23 - Fall Split Major has a lot of viewers from Europe because the game is very popular in this region. At the same time, Qatar hosted the quarter-final matches of the football championship, in which England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and other teams participated. Obviously many of the real-life football battles have drawn attention away from Rocket League’s football performance.

Previously, we wrote about the most popular competitive sports video games in 2022. In that ranking, Rocket League took the honorable first spot, ahead of such sports simulators as FIFA and Trackmania.