The International 2025 Group Stage sees a significant jump in viewership year-over-year

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Dota 2 fans couldn't look away all weekend as The International 2025's Group Stage came to a thrilling close. TI14 has already delivered chaos: stunningly, past champions Team Spirit and Team Liquid are already out, failing to secure a spot in the playoffs. With the crown now there for the taking, the suspense is absolutely electric, and the skyrocketing viewership confirms it.

TI returned to its roots in Hamburg, Germany, the site of the first-ever International and its then-record-shattering $1.6 million prize pool. But the format got a massive shakeup. Gone was the classic group stage, replaced by a Swiss-system group phase and a cutthroat Elimination Round that took the place of a seeding decider. The big difference? This time, not everyone made it out. For the first time in years, teams were actually eliminated before the playoffs started, raising the stakes dramatically.

Team Spirit and Team Liquid, both seen as frontrunners for the title, have been eliminated from the championship. On the other hand, HEROIC has emerged as the tournament’s dark horse: the Latin American squad pulled off a surprise run to the playoffs, where they’ll now look to take on Europe’s heavyweights.

The International 2025 Viewership (Group Stage and Elimination Round)

The group stage and Elimination Round racked up over 23.2 million hours of watch time, a 35% increase compared to last year’s Group Stage and Seeding Decider. Several factors contributed to this spike, but the biggest driver was the new tournament format. In the past, many fans largely skipped the Road to the International since every team advanced to the playoffs regardless. This year, the fight for playoff spots was far more intense, with some teams missing out entirely.

Another key factor was the jump in unique broadcast channels. At The International 2024, the matches were streamed on just over 270 channels. This year, during the group stage alone, that number climbed to more than 350. One standout trend was the surge in Kick’s popularity: both peak and average viewership on the green platform grew fivefold compared to last year.

The biggest match of The International 2025’s early stages was the Elimination Round showdown between Team Spirit and Team Falcons. The two-time champions suffered a surprising defeat, bowing out of the tournament before the playoffs even began. Rounding out the top three most-popular matches were the elimination clashes of Team Liquid vs. Tundra Esports and Nigma Galaxy vs. Aurora Gaming.

Overall, peak viewership for The International 2025 group stage was up 28% from last year, while average viewership climbed 18%. The biggest gains came from Russian-language broadcasts, which saw a 40% jump in their peak audience. Leading the charge was Aleksandr “Nix” Levin, a popular Russian Dota 2 community caster, who drew more than 212,000 Peak Viewers over the weekend, his most-popular stream of the year so far. Strong numbers also came from Roman “ramzes” Kushnarev and Yaroslav “just_ns” Kuznetsov, two other well-known Russian community casters. Together with Nix, they currently make up the top three most popular streamers of the tournament.

Tagalog broadcasts also saw impressive growth, even surpassing Spanish in peak viewership. Much of this was driven by KuyaNic and gabbidoto streaming across different platforms. By comparison, English-language broadcasts showed more modest gains, but they still contributed to the tournament’s overall growth.

The International 2025 is already reaching a far bigger audience in the Group Stage than last year’s event. It has become the most-popular Dota 2 tournament of the year so far, nearly doubling the Esports World Cup 2025 in peak viewership. The big question now: can it top The International 2024’s peak of 1.51 million live viewers? We’ll have the answer next week.