Gamers8 CS:GO debut is boosted by community casters to become one of the most popular events of 2023

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Gamers8’s inaugural Counter-Strike event ended on the 20th of August with Team Vitality emerging victorious and taking home $400K USD. Gamers8 2023’s viewership across its five-day-tournament was strong enough to become one of the most-watched Counter-Strike events of the year, but viewership slowed down after an explosive opening day for the event.

Our previous article shows that the event experienced one of the best opening days of any non-Major Counter-Strike tournament, becoming one of the most popular non-Major events of the last two years per Peak Viewers. As the event continued viewership continued to compound and compound, and by the end of the event Gamers8 had hosted one of the most popular CS:GO events of the year. 

The event reached 429K Peak Viewers and collected almost 2.8M Hours Watched for its first day. Across only a five-day tournament, the event received 249.5K concurrent viewers on average: the best of any non-Major event for 2023, excluding ESL-organised events like IEM Cologne or IEM Rio. However, this initial spike in viewership may have been detrimental to the event’s viewership in the end. 

Gamers8 2023 CSGO Viewership Statistics

Looking at Peak Viewers by the end of the event, the Grand Finals between ENCE and Team Vitality earned 420.9K Peak Viewers, not much more than the second-most popular game, the first-day NAVI vs FURIA match. Team Vitality appeared twice more, once against G2 in the Semifinals and their match against NAVI on the second day of the event garnered 324.5K Peak Viewers.

The Peak Viewers figure of 429K was earned during the NAVI vs FURIA match on the first day of the event. The match contributed the majority of viewership towards this figure, but the game between ENCE and Team Liquid overlapped with the match, adding to the Peak Viewers figure with fans from the official Gamers8 B-stream.

FaZe Clan against Virtus.pro also drew in high viewership, as the historical organisation managed to upset FaZe and knock them out of the single-elimination tournament. The viewership for these matches was perhaps helped by the fact that Gamers8 ran a simple single-elimination Bracket-of-16 tournament. When every match leads to elimination from the tournament, the stakes are high and the situation is ideal for drawing in viewership.

As we predicted in the Day 1 recap article for the event, Gamers8 2023 managed to break the 10M hours of watch time mark, achieving 11.2M Hours Watched by the time the event came to a close. We based this on the first-day statistics for the event, but watch time and Peak Viewers struggled to match up against the high standard set by the opening-day viewership.

English was the most popular language of the event, and interestingly it was also one of the only top languages for the event which saw a healthy growth in viewership as the event progressed and advanced throughout the bracket. As we mentioned in the previous article, Portuguese was the most popular language on the first day of the event, but this viewership immediately suffered when FURIA were knocked out by NAVI on the opening day.

With MIBR also eliminated on the same day, Portuguese fans were left with no national teams left to cheer for. Comparing the first day to the second of the event, Portuguese viewership dropped by 76% according to peak concurrent viewers. Even when comparing the first day of the event to the Grand Finals, the Portuguese-speaking audience struggled to generate viewership, which lead to it slipping down the rankings.

The second-most-popular language for the event also suffered due to teams being eliminated. The language reached its ultimate peak on the second day of the event but struggled to reach this peak again after teams from their region were eliminated.

Viewership from various regions did drop as teams that represented these regions were eliminated, but the first-day viewership for Gamers8 remains monumental. The opening NAVI vs FURIA match was one of the most popular opening day matches for a CS:GO event across the last two years. Especially when Gamers8's lack of reputation within CS:GO is accounted for, the question remains: where exactly did this huge viewership come from?

Turning to the most-watched streamers of the event, it becomes immediately clear who this huge viewership is due to: community casters. Community casters were a critical part of Gamers8 2023 viewership, as they not only contributed to the overall statistics of the event but actually were a driving force in some areas. 

Portuguese Twitch streamer gaules was a huge influence in regard to the Portuguese viewership for the event. Gaules streamed the entire tournament on his Twitch channel, but his opening game stream was, in particular, critical for the event’s viewership. Gaules is one of the biggest co-streamers of events in CS:GO, having reached 707K concurrent viewers last year for his coverage of the Imperial vs Cloud9 match at PGL Antwerp. His contribution on the first day of the event helped launch Gamers8 2023 to the top of CS:GO esports viewership for 2023.

Apart from Gaules, other community casters were hugely popular on Twitch, with many of them co-streaming the entire event. English and Russian co-streamers were the most popular options for the event, but Polish, French, and even Tagalog-speaking streamers received thousands of concurrent viewers while broadcasting the event.

Most notably, shroud and summit1g hosted a watch party for the event where both of them broadcasted the finals of the event to their Twitch channels. Collectively, they reached 37K Peak Viewers while live on Twitch and were both broadcasting for well over 12 hours. As the release of CS2 draws slower and slower, hype continues to build up in the community, even drawing back players who had effectively moved on from the franchise, like shroud.

FURIA Esports was the most popular team of the event, possibly helped by their early exit from the tournament. The Day 1 match between NAVI and FURIA was one of the most-watched matches of the entire tournament, and FURIA’s sample size of one match in this event helps boost their Average Viewers figure.

Other popular teams like NAVI and Team Vitality featured in the most popular teams for the event, but smaller organisations were able to make the cut due to the single-elimination format boosting viewership for underdog games. In comparison to Major events where underdog matches early in the event aren’t as high-stakes due to a Group Stage based on points, the viewership for Gamers8 single-elimination format was high.

Gamers8 Tournaments comparison

Looking at how the CS:GO event has compared to other events held under the Gamers8 name for 2023, the CS:GO event falls short only of the Riyadh Masters 2023, which received 587.8K Peak Viewers during the Grand Finals of the event. The CS:GO event’s Day 1 of the event drew in 429K Peak Viewers, which sadly wasn’t enough to rank first. Although the first day recorded the highest concurrent viewer count for the event, ENCE vs Vitality was the singular most-popular match of the event with 420.9K Peak Viewers.

By having teams like FURIA and NAVI eliminated earlier in the tournament, the CS:GO tournament lost the potential to have a huge peak concurrent viewers figure for Grand Finals. Although Team Vitality is a well-known organisation in CS:GO and has a large fanbase, they don’t have the same regional support that FURIA does. ENCE, although also a historical organisation that is performing well with its current roster, do not draw in the same viewership as FURIA or NAVI. 

The CS:GO event was also not able to match the watch time in terms of hours of the Riyadh Masters 2023, but comparing these events by Hours Watched is tricky, due to each event running for a different amount of days. The Hours Watched figure for the Dota 2 event will clearly be larger than the CS:GO event, as the Dota 2 event ran for a week longer than its CS:GO peer.

Top CS:GO events of 2023, per Hours Watched and Peak Viewers

The Gamers8 2023 event managed to rank within the top eight tournaments of 2023 in watch time and peak concurrent viewers, despite only lasting five days and not having any reputation behind its name in CS:GO.

In terms of prize pool to viewership ratio, the Gamers8 2023 CS:GO event in Riyadh has been their most successful event so far. The Riyadh Masters 2023 Dota 2 event is bigger in terms of viewership, with 587K Peak Viewers and 30M+ Hours Watched, but with a $15M USD prize pool their expectations must have been high. This year’s CS:GO event saw teams compete for a chance at a chunk of only a $1M USD prize pool, which is interestingly half of the $2M given to the Gamers8 Rainbow 6 Siege and Fortnite events. CS:GO looks like the best bang for the buck when it comes to Gamers8, so we might see them focus more heavily on this discipline in the future.