Riyadh aims to be the Middle East esports capital — the final results of the huge Gamers8 festival

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Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, saw the end of a major gaming festival, Gamers8, which began in July and lasted eight weeks until the end of August. The event was organized by the Saudi Esports Federation and sponsored by LG, Mastercard, Spotify, The Saudi Investment Bank and other big companies. Esports Charts team wraps up complete viewership statistics of festival's esports events.

Gamers8 hosted a series of esports tournaments with huge prize pools, as well as individual forums and events dedicated to new game industry products, IT startups, digital innovations, programming, etc. Moreover, Gamers8 had several big music concerts with star performers, a cosplay show, presentations from developers, a big souvenir store for gamers, and other activities and entertainment for the visitors.

The Gamers8 esports tournaments were held in five disciplines: PUBG Mobile, Dota 2, Fortnite, Rainbow Six Siege, and Rocket League, with a total prize pool of $15 million, and some tournaments had almost record sums, comparable to the regular world championships.

The biggest event by Hours Watched is Riyadh Masters 2022, a Dota 2 tournament with a prize pool of $4 million, more than the first Valve majors in Boston and Kiev. The tournament in Riyadh is second only to the competitions of The International series by this metric.

Riyadh Masters 2022 featured top teams, including Team Spirit, the champions of The International 10, as well as PSG.LGD, Team Secret, RNG, OG, and others. In total, Riyadh Masters 2022 accumulated 9.7 million Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number was 200K, and the Peak Viewers number was 363.5K.

PUBG Mobile World Invitational 2022 had the highest Peak Viewers number of all Gamers8 events —  421K people. The broadcasts had 236K Average Viewers, and PUBG Mobile matches racked up 7.1 million Hours Watched over 30 hours of airtime. Despite remaining a far cry from the World Championships by audience reach, PUBG Mobile World Invitational 2022 has ranked among the Top-3 tournaments in the history of the discipline with a $3 million prize pool. Only PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2021 Finals ($3.49 million) and Peacekeeper Elite League 2020 Season 3 ($3.1 million) had a larger prize pool.

The Gamers8 2022 Fortnite Championship had 1.6 million Hours Watched, as well as 71.7K Average Viewers and 112K Peak Viewers. Considering the discipline as a whole, these are pretty modest metrics. As for the prize pool, the tournament in Riyadh was one of the Top-7 largest events in Fortnite history — it had a $2 million prize pool.

The Gamers8 Rainbow Six Siege tournament had an even smaller audience coverage of 549K Hours Watched, 16.3K Average Viewers per broadcast, and 42.2K Peak Viewers. It is important to note that this event took place just days before the start of Six Berlin Major 2022. Due to that the organizers of Gamers8 missed the opportunity to invite the top teams from regional leagues — they decided to concentrate on the preparation for the Berlin major. As for the prize pool, Riyadh had $2 million — the fourth highest number in the history of the discipline. The Six Invitational 2019, for example, had the same prize pool. The standard prize pool in the last world championships was $3 million.

The Gamers8 Rocket League Tournament was the most modest of all the tournaments of the festival. Its matches totaled 465K Hours Watched, drew 15.1K Average Viewers and 31.6K Peak Viewers. The Gamers8 Rocket League tournament had a $2 million prize pool, a number second only to Rocket League Championship Series 2021-22 World Championship, held in August. Gamers8's low audience reach was due to two reasons: the small number of casters and broadcast languages, and the lack of top mainstream teams like Karmine Corp or Moist Esports.

According to feedback from the participants of different tournaments, the Gamers8 festival was held at a high level: players were satisfied with the location in Boulevard Riyadh City, living conditions and large prize pools. The organizers received a lot of positive feedback from the players, but also fulfilled another important task of the event: they gave the Middle East teams an opportunity to take part in a big tournament with the top teams. All Gamers8 tournaments had regional qualifiers for local teams.