December marked the close of both the calendar year and the esports season. While most flagship tournaments had already taken place earlier in 2025, the final month still delivered a surprisingly packed schedule. From a Counter-Strike Major to medal events in mobile esports held as part of the Southeast Asian Games, December proved that the year wasn’t done making statements just yet.
The numbers reflected that late surge in momentum. Three tournaments surpassed one million Peak Viewers, underlining the scale of audience interest even at the very end of the season. One mobile title went even further, setting a new all-time viewership record and reinforcing how diverse the global esports landscape has become.
When it comes to overall peak viewership, December’s leaderboard was topped by the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025. The Counter-Strike Major peaked at over 1.5 million concurrent viewers during the grand final between FaZe Clan and Team Vitality. While the figure fell short of all-time records, it remains a very strong result for an event that had to operate under unusually complex conditions. Different platform restrictions forced StarLadder to run separate broadcast feeds across platforms, adding significant operational challenges without diluting audience interest. We explored those realities in detail in our interview with StarLadder, where the organizer broke down what it takes to deliver a Tier-S event under modern platform constraints.
Second place went to the PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2025, held as part of the large-scale PUBG United event. The year-ending tournament delivered PUBG Mobile’s highest peak viewership in five years, while also ranking among the strongest esports performances in the game’s history overall. The result reinforced PUBG Mobile’s position as one of the most reliable audience drivers in the mobile esports ecosystem, especially when its competitive calendar reaches a seasonal climax.
The SEA Games 2025 delivered one of December’s biggest surprises. The Arena of Valor matchup between Thailand and Vietnam pushed the title into uncharted territory, becoming the first Arena of Valor event ever to surpass one million concurrent viewers. That milestone places the game among a very small group of mobile esports titles to have reached the seven-figure peak threshold, marking a defining moment in its competitive history.
Arena of Valor also claimed fourth place through a more traditional esports pathway. The Arena of Valor International Championship 2025, part of the game’s established publisher-led circuit, peaked not during the grand final but in the lower bracket final. There, Flash Wolves pulled off a dramatic comeback against Bacon Time, one of the scene’s most successful and popular teams. The unexpected timing of the peak highlighted how narrative momentum can sometimes outweigh even the final match itself.
Rounding out the top five was another SEA Games event, this time featuring Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. While MLBB finished behind Arena of Valor in December, its inclusion once again underscored the growing importance of multi-discipline events like the SEA Games as major drivers of peak esports viewership at the end of the year.
When narrowing the focus to English-speaking audiences, the hierarchy of December tournaments becomes even clearer. Once again, this segment proved to be the core driver of global esports viewership, and no event captured its attention more decisively than the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025. The Counter-Strike Major peaked at nearly three times the audience of its closest competitor within English-language broadcasts, reinforcing its position as the defining event of the month for this demographic.
That gap was especially visible when compared to the IESF World Championship in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, which finished as the second-most popular tournament among English-speaking viewers. While MLBB continues to dominate in several regional markets, its English-language audience remains significantly smaller when measured against top-tier Counter-Strike events.
Beyond Counter-Strike, English-speaking viewers also gravitated toward other established global titles. The qualification matches for the first Call of Duty League Major of 2026 attracted notable attention, reflecting early-season interest in the CDL calendar. Meanwhile, the FIFAe World Cup rounded out the ranking, highlighting the continued appeal of football-based esports to a broad international audience, even outside the traditional FPS space.
The Twitch channel rankings for December were shaped by a very narrow but decisive factor. The list was dominated exclusively by Russian- and English-language channels, all of which were focused on coverage of the Counter-Strike Major. No other title or tournament came close to matching the sustained live attention generated by the event on Twitch during the final month of the year.
One of the key reasons behind this concentration was the growing practice of streamers acquiring regional broadcast rights. This trend was especially visible in the Russian-speaking segment, where several creators secured access to Major broadcasts across different match days. By splitting coverage between multiple channels rather than centralizing it under a single broadcaster, those creators collectively pushed multiple Twitch channels into the top rankings.
In effect, December’s Twitch leaderboard reflected not just audience preferences, but evolving distribution strategies as well. Control over broadcast rights, rather than sheer channel size alone, increasingly determined which creators benefited most from the biggest esports moments of the year.
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