StarLadder Budapest Major: Kick accounted for over 20% of viewership

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The StarLadder Budapest Major wrapped up last weekend with a landmark victory for Team Vitality and one of the strongest viewership performances in esports in late 2025. Yet the most interesting story sits in the details. Because the event’s main sponsor was restricted on Twitch, the tournament’s audience distribution shifted notably compared to the Austin Major, with Kick turning out to be the biggest beneficiary. Esports Charts breaks down the tournament’s key viewership insights and highlights its most popular teams.

Platforms: Kick gains a significant share of viewership 

Across the two core platforms, Twitch and YouTube, the StarLadder Budapest Major saw a noticeable contraction in average viewership compared to the Austin Major, with a combined drop of roughly 37,000 Average Viewers. On the surface, this looks like a straightforward decline. In reality, the audience didn’t disappear, but moved.

That shift was unusually pronounced. More than 21% of the remaining audience migrated to Kick, reshaping the platform split far more dramatically than at recent Counter-Strike Majors. As a result, Kick recorded its strongest peak viewership ever for a gaming event, marking a clear milestone for the platform’s esports ambitions.

Twitch’s share of total Major viewership fell from 64% at the Austin Major to 58% in Budapest. YouTube experienced an even steeper drop, sliding from 34% to just 20%. The gap left behind was largely filled by Kick.

A significant portion of this shift was driven by Brazilian audiences following Alexandre “Gaules” Borba. His Kick channel averaged more than 82,000 live viewers, with Brazilian fans closely tracking their teams throughout every stage of the tournament. This single community accounted for a substantial share of the audience that relocated to Kick during the event.

Kick’s gains were not limited to co-streams. StarLadder’s official channels also saw a major uplift on the platform. The main tournament broadcast averaged over 5,100 viewers on Kick, more than ten times higher than BLAST’s main Kick channel performance during the Austin Major. In total, 15 Kick channels averaged above 1,000 viewers during the event, spanning a surprisingly diverse mix of Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Czech and even Tagalog-language broadcasts.

Broadcast languages: minor demographics on the rise

From a language perspective, the Budapest Major showed a modest shift toward broader audience distribution. Although Russian-speaking, Brazilian Portuguese-speaking, and English-speaking viewers continued to dominate total watch time, their combined share fell from 83% at the Austin Major to 80% in Budapest. This change was driven mainly by a dip in English-language viewership, as both Russian and Brazilian Portuguese audiences recorded slight growth.

The difference was picked up by smaller language communities, several of which showed consistent growth. Polish and Ukrainian broadcasts continued to strengthen their position and now reliably occupy fourth and fifth place in viewership. French, Spanish, Finnish and other European languages also expanded their footprint compared to Austin.

The event delivered a new all-time peak for Hungarian-language esports broadcasts, reaching 16,263 concurrent viewers. This surpassed a long-standing record set during the League of Legends World Championship in 2021, when Hungarian broadcasts peaked at 15,420 viewers.

Ukrainian-language coverage also set a new benchmark: on YouTube. The Budapest Major reached a peak of 41,800 concurrent viewers in Ukrainian, up from 33,500 during the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024.

Teams: FaZe leads in watch time, but trails in average audience

In terms of total watch time, FaZe Clan were the undisputed leaders of the StarLadder Budapest Major. Their deep run from the very first stage all the way to the grand final translated into nearly 20 million Hours Watched, the highest figure of any team at the event. That marathon campaign dominated the tournament rankings and also played a key role in widening FaZe’s lead in the 2025 US esports organizations standings.

Top 5 most-watched StarLadder Budapest 2025 Teams

The gap was substantial. Natus Vincere, who finished second by total Hours Watched, recorded a figure that was 54% lower than FaZe’s, underlining just how much additional exposure FaZe generated by surviving multiple stages and high-pressure playoff matches.

When it comes to Average Viewers, the final standings largely confirmed what was already apparent after Stage 3. By the end of the tournament, Team Vitality edged out Team Spirit to claim the top spot by average audience, reflecting both their strong on-server performance and sustained viewer interest throughout the playoffs.

The rest of the top five was filled by familiar fan-favorite teams. FURIA, Natus Vincere and FaZe Clan all posted strong Average Viewer figures, benefiting in particular from high-stakes quarterfinal matchups that delivered noticeable audience spikes. 

Media value: Budapest lands in CS’ top 5 over 2025

Earlier this autumn, we introduced Media Value as an additional metric for tournament analysis (with a detailed breakdown of our estimation methodology), allowing us to assess how events perform from a commercial exposure standpoint. Using this metric, we can now compare the StarLadder Budapest Major with other Counter-Strike tournaments.

Based on our estimates, a single on-screen banner occupying just 1% of the broadcast and running throughout the entire tournament could have been valued at more than $31.2 million. By this measure, the StarLadder Budapest Major ranks as the second most valuable Counter-Strike event of 2025, trailing only the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025, while nearly doubling the Media Value generated by IEM Cologne 2025.

Top 5 Counter-Strike esports events by Media Value in 2025

1. BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 ($34,719,282)

2. StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 ($31,292,145)

3. IEM Cologne 2025 ($15,928,879)

4. IEM Katowice 2025 ($14,404,028)

5. BLAST Open Spring 2025 ($13,741,072)

While the StarLadder Budapest Major fell short of the Austin Major in raw viewership totals, it offered something just as valuable: a clear demonstration of how flexible Counter-Strike Majors can be when the streaming landscape shifts. Faced with regulatory pressure around gambling sponsorships, the event showed that large-scale CS tournaments are capable of redistributing audiences across platforms without losing their overall reach or relevance.

Despite the challenges, the Budapest Major still delivered one of the strongest viewership performances of 2025 among PC and console esports events, and remained among the year’s standout esports tournaments overall. It may not have cracked the absolute top tier, but it reinforced Counter-Strike’s position as one of the most resilient and adaptable ecosystems in competitive gaming.