Worlds 2023 saw the highest quarterfinal viewership ever, but will the final set a new record?
The Worlds 2023 Knockout stage has progressed through its first stage. After a disappointing start with NRG Esports vs Weibo Gaming, the viewership for the Quarterfinals totally turned around and the match between T1 and LNG Esports set a new Worlds record for quarterfinal viewership.
As we covered in our first Worlds playoffs article, the Quarterfinal between NRG and Weibo Gaming was one of the weakest matches at the Worlds 2023 main stage in terms of peak viewership. The match reached only 1.2M Peak Viewers, meaning it received lower viewership than 82% of all Group Stage matches.
However, things picked up for the following matches and the match between T1 and LNG Esports reached over 3M Peak Viewers. Not only was this the most popular Quarterfinals match at Worlds 2023, but it was the most popular quarterfinal match at any Worlds event ever. With such a dynamic range of viewership for the Quarterfinals at Worlds 2023, how did the stage perform generally?
Worlds 2023 Quarterfinals Viewership
In total, all four Quarterfinals matches at Worlds 2023 received 23M Hours Watched, marking an 18.2% increase compared to the Quarterfinals of Worlds 2022. Average Viewers also featured a 43.4% increase compared to the previous year, and this figure will be important as we make our predictions for Grand Finals viewership.
The 3M Peak Viewers figure was achieved in the match between T1 and LNG Esports. This game was the most popular match among various languages, marking the first time Chinese reached over 200K PV, and the first time at Worlds 2023 that Korean reached over 1M Peak Viewers.
Korean viewership was hugely instrumental in this Peak Viewers record, not only through Korean-language viewership on Twitch and YouTube but also through Korean live-streaming platforms Afreeca TV and Naver Esports. If T1 is eliminated by JD Gaming in the Semifinals, we are guaranteed an all-Chinese Grand Final, which may have a substantially negative effect on viewership.
In our team popularity PRO article for Worlds 2023, we confirmed that T1 was not the most popular team of the Group Stage. However, the brand new esports record set by the team in their Quarter Final match proves that they still are hugely popular among esports fans.
Read also: T1 dethroned from their usual spot as the most popular team in Worlds 2023 Group Stage
In the PRO article, we also covered that North American teams struggled to generate viewership in the Group Stage, and their matches were some of the least-watched games of the event. This trend continued into the quarterfinals, as the game featuring a North American roster exhibited the lowest Peak Viewers of all four matches.
The other two matches, KT Rolster vs JD Gaming and Bilibili Gaming vs Gen.G Esports, also received significant Korean viewership, although not as much as T1. After Gen.G suffered a 2:3 loss against BiliBili Gaming and KT Rolster lost 1-3 against JD Gaming, T1 are the only Korean team remaining in the event.
T1 will face the tough opponent JD Gaming in the Semifinals, and even if they are not able to overcome their Chinese rivals, Korean viewership will be consolidated for this one game. If T1 is eliminated by JD Gaming, the Grand Final may struggle to generate peak viewership without the support of Korean audiences. This happened before at Worlds 2019: when T1 was eliminated by G2 Esports in the Semifinal, their match remained the most popular game of the entire event.
Without further ado, let’s turn to our viewership predictions for the Worlds 2023 Grand Final match.
Grand Final Viewership Predictions
In preparing a prediction for peak viewership of the Worlds 2023 Grand Final match, we have selected three versions of predicted viewership. Our model for predicting viewership takes team popularity at Worlds 2023 into account and compares this to historical data of how viewership increased for teams in the Grand Finals of previous Worlds events.
Our “Moderate Scenario” Finals are a middle ground between the highest and lowest possible viewership we have predicted. This scenario would see Worlds 2023 reach 4.57M Peak Viewers, with a possible range from 4.35M to 4.8M. In this case, Worlds 2023 would become the second-ever Worlds event to not increase its peak viewership compared to the previous year; a similar situation occurred at Worlds 2020.
The best scenario includes the more-watched of the four teams, and we predict T1 and Bilibili’s potential Grand Final match-up to reach about 5.2M Peak Viewers. In a very-best-case scenario, where T1 and Bilibili play the Grand Final and all other variables are also preferable, viewership may increase to 5.46M Peak Viewers. Although we predict the favourable scenario to improve upon the viewership of Worlds 2022, this scenario is unlikely to occur and Worlds 2023 will likely not reach a higher peak viewership than Worlds 2022.
In the potential Grand Final match-up between JD Gaming and Weibo Gaming, this would be an unfavourable viewership scenario for Worlds 2023. Chinese viewership is generally low on Western platforms, and these two teams are substantially less popular than T1 and Bilibili. In this scenario, the Grand Final would likely reach 3.95M Peak Viewers, making it the least popular Worlds final match since 2021.
By using the Esports Charts compare tool, we can see that the Quarterfinal match between T1 and LNG Esports already ranks the Worlds 2023 tournament as more popular than Worlds 2016, 2017, and 2018.
2022 hosted the most popular Worlds event to date, reaching 5.14M Peak Viewers for the Grand Final. Although 2023 may not reach a higher peak than the previous year, the data for 2022 should have predicted a lower viewership for the Grand Final.
Worlds 2022’s pre-Grand Final peak viewership was the lowest the event had seen since 2018, but 2022 exhibited an abnormal growth in viewership for the Grand Final. This was likely due to the event being the first Worlds tournament to be covered by community casters, and many live-streamers with large followings broadcasted the final event.
Between 2017 and 2022, grandfinalists at Worlds experienced a 190% increase in viewership at peak compared to their average viewership for matches before the Semifinal. However, at Worlds 2022 the grandfinalists enjoyed a 410% increase in viewership for the final match. It remains unlikely that Worlds 2023 will also experience such an abnormally large growth in viewership, but if it could, this would make it the most popular Worlds event ever.
Worlds 2023 continues with the Semifinals stage on Saturday, November 11. Bilibili Gaming vs Weibo Gaming starts us off on Saturday, and JD Gaming against T1 will keep us going through the weekend with their match on Sunday. To stay on top of upcoming Worlds matches, use the schedule page for Worlds 2023 on Esports Charts.
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