RLCS 2024 Season: Watch time falls, peak viewership stays strong thanks to French creators

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The RLCS 2024 - World Championship concluded on September 15 and crowned Team BDS as the victors, making this the organization’s second Rocket League world championship title. As we covered in our earlier article following the event’s group stage, viewership statistics for the RLCS are complicated. Esports Charts has collated statistics for not only the 2024 World Championship, but also data for the entire 2024 and 2023 RLCS seasons, to compare how viewership has evolved for the title. 

The 2024 World Championship experienced complex viewership shifts, even from its opening couple of days. Although the event’s opening recorded low average viewership for a world championship, it reached a new milestone for peak viewership. The event concluded similarly, with viewership seemingly at odds with itself.

RLCS 2024 - World Championship Viewership Statistics

The removal of the Wild Card stage from the World Championship had a direct effect on the event’s final viewership statistics. The 2024 World Championship was about 18 hours shorter than previous events, which contributed to it recording fewer Hours Watched than any other RLCS final event: 7.4M Hours Watched. Conversely, the shorter event helped the tournament to generate a higher average viewership. The tournament received 153.7K Average Viewers, only about 6K viewers fewer than the most-watched RLCS event by AV, the first Major tournament of 2024.

While the event did manage to receive a respectable Average Viewership, the tournament received 426.8K Peak Viewers, roughly speaking about 40K viewers fewer than last year’s world championship. The high peak viewership came from Karmine Corp’s semifinals match against G2 Stride, which KC ultimately lost 3-4. Peak viewership for the Grand Final between G2 and Team BDS could only reach 304K Peak Viewers: this marked a decrease of 121.2K concurrent viewers compared to the Grand Final of last year’s world championship.

Despite a French team competing in the grand final, viewership for this final match was especially low. Although French-language viewership has become the largest audience for RLCS events, this viewership is solely directed at the two teams supported by popular French content creators: Karmine Corp and Gentle Mates Alpine. We can see just how popular these French creators are by their peak viewership throughout their coverage of the event.

Kamet0 of Karmine Corp and Gotaga of Gentle Mates were the two most popular streamers for the event, with 139.5K and 95K Peak Viewers, respectively. Both of these streamers received their peak viewership during their teams’ final match before elimination in playoffs, highlighting that viewership for these two could have likely gone even higher, if their teams had managed to progress further into the playoffs stage. 

Popular North American creator xQc also tuned into the event. The French Canadian streamer watched some of the event’s grand final on his Twitch stream, contributing his sizeable personal following to the event’s overall viewership. He reached 34.3K Peak Viewers during his broadcast, with tens of thousands of xQc’s fans watching Team BDS take the championship over G2 Stride. 

  Most popular Rocket League esports events by peak concurrent viewers  

By the end of the event, the RLCS 2024 World Championship became the second-most-popular world championship event in RLCS history, and the third-most popular event overall. If Gentle Mates Alpine had been able to progress further into the event, or if Karmine Corp had been able to topple G2 Stride, we likely would have seen a much higher peak viewership for the event, and potentially the most popular event in RLCS history.

Across the four most popular Rocket League esports events ever, all of their most popular matches feature either Karmine Corp, Gentle Mates Alpine, or both teams. The impact these teams and their followings have had on Rocket League’s esports scene is dominant, with the audiences of these teams effectively co-opting the esports title. The most popular Rocket League events are no longer those which feature the most exciting matches, but those that could feature both of these teams together: this is how the Major 1 event earlier this year became one of the most popular RLCS events ever.

Most popular RLCS matches not featuring French creator-supported teams

All in all, the recent World Championship event for Rocket League was complex in terms of viewership statistics. The removal of the Wild Card stage from the event caused it to be shorter, having a negative effect on total watch time but a positive one on the event’s average viewership. However, Gentle Mates early elimination from playoffs did not help the event’s peak viewership, and Karmine Corp’s loss against G2 Stride cost the event a potentially record-setting grand final. As it stands, the RLCS will only continue to break viewership records if we see a Gentle Mates Alpine vs Karmine Corp final.

Viewership Comparison of the 2024 & 2023 RLCS Seasons

Comparing the overall results of the 2024 and 2023 RLCS seasons, the 2024 iteration recorded a downturn in viewership compared to the previous year. English-language audiences remained the largest audience for Rocket League, but French is slowly closing the gap between the two languages. While French remains significantly behind English in terms of total watch time, French was able to reach the highest peaks in 2024 thanks to community casters. In other words, English-language audiences are generally larger than French ones for Rocket League esports, but French reaches higher peaks thanks to the support of Kamet0 and Gotaga.

English-language audiences also experienced a decline in average viewership compared to last year, which affected the viewership of the entire RLCS 2024 season. This audience is the largest by for Rocket League esports, and its decrease in size significantly affected the overall viewership of the season. During the 2024 World Championship, English-language audiences recorded 35.5% less watch time than the previous world championship tournament. 

As it stands, the RLCS 2024 season recorded 30.09M Hours Watched, making it less watched than both the 2023 and 2022 seasons. This once again comes largely from the decreasing English-language audience for the esports title, which was previously its largest source of viewership. 

French-language viewership for the RLCS has increased, but it has not grown enough to replace the gap left behind by the decreasing English-language audiences. French viewership is still able to power massive peaks for the RLCS thanks to the content creators behind the esports title’s most popular teams, but this viewership only comes into play when these teams are playing.