Six Invitational 2024 Group Stage experiences an overall decline but shows growth in Portuguese viewership
Six Invitational 2024 kicked off on February 13 with 20 of the best teams in the world battling for the title of Rainbow Six: Siege world champion. In a continuation of its first-day viewership figure troubles compared to the previous edition, the Group Stage could not match up to its predecessor.
This is the fourth year that the game's biggest competition of the season has carried a $3,000,000 prize pool, but that has not helped it recapture the series-high viewership numbers from previous years. Ubisoft even announced a new global esports circuit for its popular FPS offering at the end of 2022 and a multi-year partnership with BLAST that would see the Danish organization take up the responsibility of producing every event under this new setup.
Despite such changes to the yearly schedule, the Six Invitational 2023 only finished as the sixth-most popular iteration since 2017. Its successor has seemingly been unable to arrest this slide, with this year's Group Stage hitting 119.9K Peak Viewers, a decline of 18%.
The most popular match came on Day 5 when Team Liquid duked it out against M80 in a battle for bragging rights between sides from North and South America. This clash registered 103.4K PV, one of only two entries to cross the 100K mark, with the other one being a Day 5 game pitting DarkZero Esports against G2 Esports in another tussle for bragging rights, this time between NA and Europe.
There were falls in the Hours Watched and Average Viewers metrics as well, by 24% and 17%, respectively. One worrying contributing factor to these declines has been the stats put up by English, which has plummeted in 2024 as the number of participating sides representing the language has come down.
It also has to be pointed out that Rainbow Six Siege esports has returned to Brazil after a long gap. Moreover, there are quite a few teams and players representing the South American nation in this S-Tier tournament.
However, despite the obvious home factor and Brazilians' love for FPS games, the Six Invitational 2024 has not been able to fix this falling viewership issue it has struggled with for years. In fact, of the five home sides participating, only two — Team Liquid and w7m esports — have been able to make it to the five most popular games table.
There are positives, though, with Portuguese seeing a rise in its Group Stage stats compared to the 2023 event. Also, all five representatives have made the Playoffs, with fans also set for an all-Brazil derby when LOS take on FaZe Clan in the second match of the Upper Bracket Round 1.
There's still much action to come before we reach the Grand Final and crown the latest R6 world champion. Lots can change over the next week of competition, so fans and organizers will hope the great action and positive performances, especially from the five home sides, can bring more attention to this season-ending tournament.
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