StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 Stage 2 Recap — Turkish & Ukrainian streams rising
The second stage of the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 has wrapped up, which means it’s time to take a look at the mid-stage results. More and more top teams are joining the competition, and this is helping attract new audiences from different regions. Compared to Stage 1, Turkish and Ukrainian streams showed significant growth. Both languages ranked in the top five for peak concurrent viewers — all thanks to the matches featuring Natus Vincere and Aurora Gaming.
Let’s begin with a quick recap of the stage’s game results. Natus Vincere and FaZe delivered the strongest performances in Stage 2, each winning all three of their matches and becoming the first teams to advance to Stage 3. Also, congratulations to B8 Esports, who made it into the top 16 of a Major for the first time in their history and will now fight for a spot in the playoffs.
Team Liquid had a remarkable run in the tournament: after losing their first two matches, they bounced back, won the next three, and still advanced to Stage 3. NiP experienced the opposite: the team started strong with two wins but couldn’t clinch a third, ultimately resulting in their exit from the tournament.
StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 — Stage 2 Viewership Statistics
As expected, Stage 2 drew higher viewership than Stage 1. The competition level had risen, and big-name teams like Natus Vincere, Fnatic, and Team Liquid — each with a massive global fanbase — entered the fray.
Aurora Gaming and Natus Vincere’s participation in Stage 2 led to a significant boost in both Turkish and Ukrainian broadcast viewership. Turkish streams, which peaked at just 500 viewers during Stage 1, skyrocketed to 54,000 in Stage 2. Ukrainian broadcasts also saw strong momentum, growing roughly x2.5. Both languages broke into the top five most-popular in Stage 2, though this dynamic may shift moving forward.
Turkish viewership will likely drop back to previous levels since Aurora Gaming — the only Turkish team at the event — has been eliminated. Ukrainian numbers, however, will almost certainly continue to rise, with NAVI and B8 Esports still in the race heading into Stage 3.
As for the other broadcast languages, Russian viewership grew thanks to increased activity on channels like Vadim “evelone2004” Kozakov and Max “shadowkekw” Pavlov. Portuguese saw a slight dip. During Stage 1, several Brazilian teams reached the fifth round of the Swiss Stage, but in Stage 2 the situation shifted: some were eliminated early (MIBR), while others secured advancement ahead of schedule (Imperial Esports).
The most-popular match of the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 was the clash between FaZe and NiP. Finn “Karrigan” Andersen’s team pulled off a comeback victory in a series that went through multiple overtime rounds. The match drew over 513,000 concurrent live viewers. This was slightly below the most-popular Stage 1 match of the Major — FaZe versus Fluxo, which attracted more than 520,400 concurrent viewers.
The NAVI vs. Imperial Esports matchup came in second, which wasn’t surprising given the massive fanbases behind both teams. Astralis also drew plenty of attention, as both of their games were elimination matches. The Danish squad managed to take down Aurora Gaming but fell short against Team Liquid.
Stage 3 of the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 will run from December 4 to 7. During this stage, 16 teams will compete in multiple rounds of the Swiss Stage format to determine the eight teams moving on to the playoffs. You can keep up with match results and viewership stats on the Esports Charts report page.
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