The International 2022 Day 1 Recap: Smaller prize pool, fewer viewers at the start

The International 2022 tournament's prize pool has exceeded $16 million since the Group Stage began, but still lags far behind last year's numbers. This fact directly affects the audience interest in the championship. In a new article, Esports Charts will sum up TI11 Day 1 and compare its viewership metrics to last year's event.

TI11 First Two Days Results

The previous International champion, Team Spirit, started the TI11 Group Stage with a victory over Entity and then played three draws. PSG.LGD, the vice-champion, started off with a loss against Evil Geniuses and played 1-1 against Hokori and Soniqs. At the same time, the Chinese team came back stronger on the second day, defeating OG and Team Liquid. The strongest teams at the end of two days in Group A are EG and RNG, and BetBoom Team is quite close to dropping out of the tournament. In Group B, Team Aster and Tundra Esports lead, while Talon Esports and TSM share last place in the standings.

Day 1 Viewership Statistics

The TI11 Day 1 matches accumulated more than 6.6 million Hours Watched and drew 477.4K Average Viewers. The Peak Viewers number was 679.4K reached at the third round of five concurrent matches. At the same time, most of the Day 1 audience followed the tournament on Twitch, while the PV number on YouTube was almost five times lower.

The most popular match of TI11 Day 1 is the encounter between Team Spirit and Entity, which was watched by 433.7K PV. The second place is taken by the Evil Geniuses vs. OG match, with the PV number being only 2% fewer. English language broadcasts made up 42% of the total HW on Day 1 of the tournament. Russian-language streams are in second place, accounting for 37% of the total HW.

The Top 3 most-watched channels are the same as those that were at the end of the Last Chance Qualifier. The leader is the main PGL channel, and the second channel of the official coverage studio is in third place. The Russian-speaking streamer Nix became the most watched community caster and is in second place in the overall Top of the channels, accounting for more than 10% of the Day 1 Hours Watched total number.

Unlike the results of TI10 Day 1, the start of TI11 appeared to be far less successful. The PV and AV numbers are 40% lower, and the HW number is 41% lower. The championship's prize pool is still going to grow, as well as its viewership statistics, but it looks doubtful that it will be able to surpass last year's results.