Q2 brought the mid-point of many esports titles’ competitive calendars. Many of the most popular esports games, such as League of Legends, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and more, hosted some of the year’s most-watched tournaments, and many esports disciplines showed a significant increase in their viewership compared to the previous year. Esports Charts has collated the most popular esports events of Q2 2024, by both hours of watch time and average concurrent viewership, with the latter metric being available for our PRO subscribers.
League of Legend’s Mid-Season Invitational 2024 was by far the most-watched event of Q2 with over 78.4 million HW collected. The event became the most popular MSI ever, having set records for both peak concurrent viewership and overall hours of watch time. The MOBA esports title continues to solidify its dominance in the esports scene, and it was followed by its usual follower, ML:BB.
MPL Indonesia Season 13 reached over 68.9M Hours Watched, becoming the most-watched mobile gaming esports event of the quarter, and the only event to come close to the MSI’s massive watch time. The 13th season of the Indonesian MPL began at the end of Q2, and in total, the event garnered 110.2 million HW by the time of its completion. For these statistics, we have only considered viewership statistics accrued by events during the quarter, even if the parts of the event itself lie outside Q2.
In third place, the VCT 2024: Americas League - Stage 1 was the most-watched Valorant event of the quarter and the most-watched shooter-genre event of the period. The Americas Stage 1 event received 27.59M Hours Watched, even outperforming the international LAN Masters Shanghai, which was live for a far shorter period than the lengthy Stage 1 regional circuit. The Americas circuit outperformed both the Pacific League - Stage 1 and the EMEA League - Stage 1, which both also ranked within our top 10 for this quarter.
Generally, Valorant has fallen behind Counter-Strike in our rankings and wrap-ups for the esports industry, but Q2 2024 marked a time when the new hero-based shooter was significantly ahead of the classic esports title. Counter-Strike’s most-watched event of the quarter, the ESL Pro League Season 19, received only 23.76M Hours Watched, landing in 7th place in this ranking.
Apart from League of Legend’s wildly popular MSI event, the regional circuits for the Korean side of the esports scene also ranked highly within this list. The LCK Spring 2024 generated 26M Hours Watched, nabbing fourth on this ranking, and the LCK Summer 2024 generated 24.4M Hours Watched, despite only beginning in June. Korea is clearly where League of Legend’s true viewership power resides, and the Q2 results for the esports scene only continue to prove this fact.
Standing out from the rest of the events here, the Arena of Valor Premier League 2024 received 20M Hours Watched, landing in 9th on this ranking. The mobile gaming MOBA game received a significant amount of viewership for its mid-season Major event. Despite the Premier League 2024’s playoffs stage taking place during the beginning of Q3, the event still managed to generate a sizable amount of watch time and join this ranking as the second mobile gaming entry.
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For our PRO users, explore the top events of the quarter by average concurrent viewership, rather than total watch time. Events such as the Valorant Champions Tour regional circuits can be live for over hundreds of hours; although they degenerate a sizable concurrent audience, the sheer length of these events can inflate their watch time and cause them to overshadow shorter but more popular esports events. This Average Viewers ranking highlights the most popular events of the quarter, even if they were short and sweet.
Many of the same esports titles are represented here as in the previous graph, although there are some slight differences. The shooters genre of esports experienced a wild mix-up in its rankings here, with one esports title managing to contribute more events to this top 10 and highlight its popularity. We also saw a brand-new esports title which was not only not present in the previous ranking, but is the only esports title of its genre to rank within this list.
Street Fighter 6 represented the fighting game community, with the recent LEGENDUS tournament receiving 261.5K AV, enough to rank within this top events list. The event was hosted by famous Japanese content creator fps_shaka, whose involvement with the event helped boost it to become not only one of the top esports events of the quarter, but by far the most popular fighting game event of the year so far.
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