S1mple boosts Thunderpick World Championship 2024 viewership despite Team Falcons' early exit
The Thunderpick World Championship 2024 began on October 21, with the Playoffs set to be hosted at the LVL Dome Arena in Berlin. The event has seen matches in three out of the four groups, with sides like HEROIC, Virtus.pro, Fnatic, and Cloud9 seen in action so far.
The event carries the highest-ever prize pool for the series — $1,000,000 — announced by a sportsbook for an esports event that began back in April. This Counter-Strike event consists of a Group Stage and Playoffs, with 16 participants from all over the globe, including South America, North America, and Europe.
Another fact that makes the Thunderpick World Championship 2024 highly appealing is the presence of s1mple. The Ukrainian megastar represented Team Falcons, and although he gave fans their money's worth with some blistering plays, the team made an early exit after finishing bottom of Group A with a 0:2 record.
However, the on-loan NAVI pro's participation did help the Thunderpick World Championship 2024's viewership dynamics. Thanks to him, Team Falcons was by far the most popular and watched team during the first three days of action in the Group Stage.
It was also part of the two most popular matches played so far at this top-tier competition. Only one other side, the Russian esports organization Virtus.pro, now based in Armenia, can lay claim to having multiple entries on this table, with one of these games being the number one entrant against s1mple's Team Falcons.
Such was the drawing power of Team Falcons with s1mple that only the two games it played crossed the 100K Peak Viewers mark. In fact, the top entry almost touched 250K PV, with the next highest game not to involve the Danish roster coming between OG and Virtus.pro.
These viewership numbers were also massive improvements on the inaugural edition from 2023. Compared to the Thunderpick World Championship 2023, this year's edition did 158.16%, 242.67%, and 144% better in terms of Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers, respectively.
Interestingly, the Team Falcons roster didn't have that many attention-grabbing results to boast of heading into the Thunderpick World Championship 2024. The headline signing of s1mple did give the team a chance to change that, and although its poor results put paid to those hopes, its star player's displays did give the team a lot more exposure among online fans.
Moreover, thanks to the attention brought by s1mple's participation, the official channel of GRID, one of the organizers, almost touched a new peak concurrent viewership record. The Twitch handle touched around 49K PV during the Team Falcons versus Virtus.pro encounter, just 1115 viewers short of the record achieved during the FaZe Clan versus Virtus.Pro Grand Final from the 2023 iteration.
There's a lot more action to come from the Thunderpick World Championship 2024, where three sides — 3DMAX, The MongolZ, and HEROIC — have already made the Playoffs. The Grand Final and Third Place Match will take place on November 3, and Esports Charts will ensure to keep readers updated with proceedings.
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