Overview of the WePlay Academy League Season 3 — the most popular tournament in the series

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The evening of February 13 marked the end of WePlay Academy League Season 3, in which junior Counter-Strike: Global Offensive rosters defended the honor of ten famous clubs. The prize fund of the competition amounted to $100K, which is by now a standard amount for the league. Today we will talk about how the third tournament of the series went, which matches attracted the most viewers, and also compare the championship with other junior leagues.

The mouz NXT team representing the European esports club MOUZ became the champion of WePlay Academy League Season 3, being awarded $45,000 in prize money. In the grand final, the team defeated BIG Academy with a score of 2:0. Note that during the entire tournament, mouz NXT lost only two maps - against Spirit Academy in the group stage and Astralis Talent in the playoffs.

It is noteworthy that the youth roster of Astralis finished the group stage of WePlay Academy League Season 3 on the last spot, but having clenched their teeth, managed to climb to the third spot according to the results of the event. This helped the team become the most viewed in the tournament with 452.3K Hours Watched.

The performance of the updated NAVI Junior roster in its debut championship wasn’t stellar. The team took the 7-8th spot, losing to Astralis Talent in the second play-in round. Despite this result, thanks to the tag’s recognizability, NAVI Junior became the most popular team in the tournament.

Only matches with the participation of NAVI Junior managed to enter the top 5 matches of WePlay Academy League Season 3 in terms of Peak Viewers. The encounter with Astralis Talent in the play-in gathered 28.5K Peak Viewers, becoming the most popular match of the event. At the same time, 20.3K Average Viewers followed the games of the youth roster of NAVI, which is 41% more than the respective indicator of the tournament as a whole.

WePlay Academy League Season 3 surpassed many of the viewership figures of previous tournaments in the series. Compared to WePlay Academy League 2021, its Average Viewers and Hours Watched indicators have grown by 28% and 8%, respectively. At the same time, the most popular match in the history of the league was the grand final of the second season between NAVI Junior and mouz NXT, which gathered 51.9K Peak Viewers.

Compared to the junior championships in League of Legends, WePlay Academy League Season 3 turned out to be more popular than many others. In terms of Average Viewers, it managed to overtake the LJL 2021 Academy League, Turkey Academy League 2021 Winter, and also currently surpasses NA Academy Spring 2022, the matches of which will run until May 19. At the same time, WePlay Academy League Season 3 is already behind CBLOL Academy 2022 Split 1, which started on January 25 and will last until May 1.

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Junior leagues are undoubtedly a necessary and important part of any esports discipline. Clubs get the opportunity to independently educate young stars who, over time, will be able to fit perfectly into the main roster of the organization or find their place in another team. Recall that m0NESY, who played for NAVI Junior, is currently a player in the main CS:GO roster of G2 Esports.