Gamers8 assimilates itself into the esports industry as a major third-party tournament host

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Gamers8’s second annual gaming festival was held this summer, hosting multiple esports events for varying disciplines and featuring tens of millions of dollars worth of prize pools. As Gamers8’s second year of running comes to a close, their growing watch time and how this viewership has evolved since 2022 paints a picture of a new break-out name in esports event organisation. 

The festival, which is supported by the Saudi Esports Federation, was held as usual in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Across eight weeks of festivities, Gamers8 hosted many “Elite Tournaments”, which are major events for mainstream esports disciplines such as CS:GO, Dota 2, Rocket League, Street Fighter 6, StarCraft 2, and more.

As we looked at in previous articles covering Gamers8, some of their events were hugely popular compared to other third-party events. The evolution of their viewership and which events were the most successful in terms of viewership for 2023 are important topics to consider when evaluating the success of these events in live-streaming.

Gamers8 Gaming Festival Viewership By Event

Looking at the overall statistics for the event, Gamers8 2023 drew in 62.23M hours of watch time in total. For comparison, Gamers8 2023 earned more watch time than the first split of Kings League 2023 (47M HW) and just less than 10M hours of watch time more than the entire Valorant Champions 2023 event (53.59M HW).

In terms of the breakdown for this viewership, a majority of Gamers8’s watch time for the year was thanks to their Dota 2 event. The Riyadh Masters 2023 was not only one of the largest esports events of the year overall, but it was also the second-most-watched Dota 2 event of 2023 so far. Riyadh Masters 2023 received 30M hours of watch time in total, only 2.3M HW fewer than The Lima Major 2023 received, which was the most-watched Dota 2 event of the year so far.

The Lima Major 2023 not only outperformed Gamers8’s Dota 2 event in terms of watch time, but it did this on a budget. Compared to The Riyadh Masters 2023 event, the Lima Major 2023 had a prize pool of only 1/30th of what the Saudis had to offer. With its $15M USD prize pool, Riyadh Masters 2023 set a new record: the largest prize pool ever recorded in Dota 2 for a third-party event organiser. Only Valve-sponsored “The International” events boasted larger prize pools, and before 2023 the record for the largest third-party prize pool was held by the Riyadh Masters 2022 event, which featured a $4.2M USD prize pool.

Gamers8 also hosted the PUBG Mobile World Invitational, a mid-season event for the large mobile gaming discipline. On the mobile gaming side of things, Gamers8 struggled to draw in viewership as their PUBG Mobile event failed to match the viewership of the same event over the last two years. However, their PUBG Battlegrounds event was the most-watched and most popular event of the year so far for the PC game. 

Moving down the list, Gamers8’s inaugural CS:GO event was also one of the most-watched events of the year for its discipline. Gamers8 2023 CS:GO was the eighth Counter-Strike event of the year to break the 10M hours of watch time mark, which is even more impressive considering the event only lasted five days. Possibly aided by its short-form nature, the event also recorded one of the most successful opening days of an event in 2023. Comparing Gamers8 to other 2023 CS:GO events, only the BLAST.tv Paris Major, the singular Major event of 2023 and the final Major of CS:GO, received more viewership than Gamers8 2023 on Day 1. 

Next up, Gamers8’s Street Fighter 6, Rocket League, and Fortnite events all received similar viewership, roughly 1.2M hours of watch time. Of these three, their Rocket League event was the most impressive. With its $2M USD prize pool, the event rivalled the prize pool of the 2022-2023 World Championship event. Ultimately, the Rocket League event was unable to gain more viewership than the main three official RLCS events. However, as the fourth-most-watched Rocket League event of 2023, Gamers8 is the sole major third-party event organiser for Rocket League this year.

The Street Fighter 6 event wasn’t as fortunate. Although the third-most-watched Gamers8 event of 2023, the fighting game event was unable to compete with the larger and more established Street Fighter events in terms of viewership. Surprisingly of no help in terms of viewership, Gamers8 2023 was the first ever $1M USD fighting game event and the largest prize pool in Street Fighter history. Nevertheless, viewership was relatively low considering the huge hype behind Street Fighter at the moment.   

Finally, the Fortnite event for Gamers8 this year received solid viewership in the context of the discipline. With 1.21M hours of watch time, the event once again was the most-watched third-party event of 2023 for its discipline so far. The event was exclusively outperformed by FNCS Major events, and the Saudi Arabian tournament received more watch time than the Brazilian Major events of the year. Despite taking over community event organisation in many games, viewership did not universally grow for Gamers8. In fact, their 2023 Fortnite event received less viewership than their 2022 Fortnite event.

Other Gamers8 events for 2023 that we did not touch on are their StarCraft 2, Tekken 7, Rainbow Six Siege, and Rennsport events. Despite boasting millions of dollars of prize pools combined, none of these events were individually able to earn more than 1M hours of watch time. They also hosted three separate FIFAe events, but individually none of them surpassed 1M HW and their viewership was low compared to other events for the discipline this year.

2023 and 2022 Viewership Statistics Comparison

When comparing Gamers8 events to their inaugural counterparts from 2022, we have a bit of a limited selection. Although 2023 was only Gamers8’s second year in esports organisation, they considerably expanded their calendar. In 2022, Gamers8 hosted only four major events.

  Comparison of 2022 and 2022 events for applicable Gamers8 tournaments, per Hours Watched  

Their Dota 2 events saw the biggest growth with 207% more Hours Watched compared to 2022, as the name Riyadh Masters is becoming more ingrained in the Dota 2 scene. In 2022, Gamers8 hosted their first Riyadh Masters and received decent viewership for a third-party event. However, in 2023 they’ve become one of the biggest events of the year. 

This growth may be due to the $11M increase in prize pool coming into 2023, but also due to the Saudi Esports Federations working more closely with ESL, an established name in the esports sphere. For 2023, Gamers8 worked together with ESL to have the DreamLeague Season 19 & 20 act as qualifiers for the Riyadh Masters 2023 event. Not only did this serve as a way to legitimise the new event organisers to the discipline through their connection to a historical name, but they also received some healthy advertisement from the DreamLeague events as the winning teams were announced to have qualified for the Ryiadh Masters event.

It’s unequivocal that both the Dota 2 and Rocket League events for Gamers8 2023 were hugely successful not only within their own disciplines but in the bigger picture as part of the world’s largest gaming festival. However, while these events were growing and developing within their respective disciplines, the other two returning events from 2022 suffered in terms of viewership this year.

Both Fortnite and Rainbow Six: Siege saw dips in viewership coming into 2023, despite boasting some of the largest prize pools in their disciplines. Although there are discipline-specific reasons for this dip, it may simply be due to Gamers8’s viewership being diluted by all the extra tournaments and events they hosted this year. 

Specific to the Rainbow Six: Siege discipline, Gamers8 2023 may have struggled due to the event being less prestigious than the Six Invitational 2023 event, the ultimate event of the R6S season. Gamers8 2023 for R6S also only saw eight teams attend the event, with many of the top teams from around the world not attending. In terms of Fortnite, Gamers8 did integrate themselves more heavily with the discipline. 

In Fortnite, Gamers8 continued their partnership with ESL and DreamHack, having multiple DreamHack events throughout the year act as qualifiers for the ultimate Gamers8 event. However, Fortnite viewership has generally declined since last year, and the FNCS continues to completely take over the competitive ecosystem for Fortnite. With less and less space remaining for third-party event organisers, it remains unclear if Gamers8 will be able to take a major role within the Fortnite discipline. 

A big thank you to all the esports enthusiasts who joined us at #Gamers8 over the past 8 weeks! You're the best ????❤️#TheLandofHeroes pic.twitter.com/uAmGCMKKcF

— Gamers8 Esports (@Gamers8GG) August 28, 2023

Overall, Gamers8 2023 has continued the process for the Saudi Arabian event organiser to take its place within the esports organisation. The event organiser has quickly become one of the largest names in third-party esports tournaments, and their willingness to expand into various disciplines is welcome in esports. Gamers8 has already developed a foothold for themselves within Dota 2, CS:GO, and Rocket League as one of the few major third-party tournament hosts. 

Although viewership has dropped for Gamers8 in some disciplines compared to 2022, the event’s size and reach across multiple esports disciplines help to mitigate these viewership lows. Keep an eye out on the developing scene of the esports ecosystem with the help of Esports Charts and our databases of viewership statistics.