The International for the first time didn't make it to the top 10 tournaments of the year by concurrent viewership
The 12th tournament of The International series ended last night in Seattle. Despite the significantly reduced prize pool (TI is no longer the leader even within the discipline), the championship became the most popular Dota 2 tournament of 2023, but in the context of all esports, it did not enter the top 10 events of the year in terms of concurrent viewers: this happened for the first time in the history of the series.
Final day of the championship saw two matches played in the knockout stage. First, Gaimin Gladiators — arguably the best team of the season based on DPC results — faced off against LGD Gaming and booked their spot in the grand finals by taking the opponents down in a convincing 2:0 victory. The game attracted over 1.2 million viewers at peak, and it was the first time TI 2023 match passed the 1 million viewers mark.
In the grand finals GG met with Team Spirit, the winners of The International 2021, who reached peak form by the end of the current season (victories at Riyadh Masters 2023 and DreamLeague Season 21). Unfortunately, the series wasn’t even close: Spirit defeated their opponents with a score of 3:0 and became two-time Aegis winners: this is the second team in history to claim such an achievement (the first were OG, who won the tournaments in 2018 and 2019).
The final match at its peak attracted 1.4 million concurrent viewers, and the peak was reached during the first map of the grand final. Although this is the highest result for a Dota 2 match of the year, the results of the championship can hardly be called very successful from a statistical point of view.
TI 2023 bypassed the hyped Riyadh Masters: the TI prize pool is three times less than that of Riyadh, but at its peak, the championship in Seattle still attracted 2.5 times more viewers. At the same time, the competition was only the fourth most popular in The International series, with 18% fewer Peak Viewers than TI 2022.
The International 2023 showed rather depressing dynamics in the context of the global esports industry. Every year, the championship ended up in the top ten most popular competitions of the year, but 2023 was an exception: according to current statistics, TI ranks only 12th among the most popular championships of 2023. It is behind not only the largest international competitions but also some regional tournaments. Thus, both splits of the Korean League of Legends series LCK, as well as MPL Indonesia, were higher than TI. In addition, BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 and VCT 2023: LOCK//IN were higher too.
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