IEM Katowice 2022 becomes the most popular non-major CS:GO tournament

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IEM Katowice 2022, the first worldwide Counter Strike: Global Offensive LAN tournament this year, ended on the evening of February 27. In a new article Esports Charts will sum up the results of the tournament, tell you about its record and which team outpaced NAVI in popularity with viewers.

IEM Katowice 2022 was held on LAN for the first time in two years. During the opening ceremony head of Product Development in ESL Michal Carmac Blicharz spoke on stage at Spodek Arena: he touched upon the tragic situation in Ukraine and stressed the importance of esports in unity and friendship of all nations and nationalities around the world. Then the former NAVI player and the legend of the CS:GO scene, Ioann Edward Sukharev, carried the IEM Katowice 2022 trophy to the stage. The current NAVI squad received an award for winning the third season of Intel Grand Slam, and Alexander ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev spoke out about the latest events in Ukraine. The best player of the year 2021 according to HLTV.org said that the most important thing in the present situation is to stay human.

After the opening ceremony, NAVI was greatly supported by the audience, but the team did not manage to win the IEM Katowice 2022. In the final stage of the tournament eliminated teams could not win on any of the maps, but the score in the series does not show the intensity of the matches at all: each one was incredibly spectacular. The finalists of the tournament — FaZe Clan and G2 Esports — made it to the quarterfinals of IEM Katowice 2022, placing in the top 3 teams of Group B. FaZe defeated Gambit Esports and Heroic on the way to the grand final, while G2 defeated Virtus.pro and NAVI. Considered an outsider by the bookmakers, FaZe surprised many by defeating G2 in the final with a 3:0 score. At least 30 rounds were played on each map of the decisive game, and the second game lasted several hours and ended with a score of 31:27.

The IEM Katowice 2022 champions won $400K, and broky was named the best player of the tournament — this is the first major victory for FaZe Clan in 2.5 years and the first MVP medal in the Latvian's career. As for G2, it lost its fourth final in a S-Tier tournament in two years and continued the series of second places.

FaZe Clan's member Twistzz became the eleventh pro player to ever win an ESL tournament in both Cologne and Katowice. Other players with this achievement are s1mple, electronic, BoombI4, Perfecto from the current NAVI squad, as well as flamie and former Fnatic players.

Jks played for the FaZe Clan team in the tournament. The player entered the tournament almost by chance, first replacing ropz who got coronavirus, and then rain, who couldn't play for the same reason. It is noteworthy that FaZe Clan played only two matches in the group stage with its full roster, and jks took the chance to prove himself and showed one of his best performances and won the biggest event in his career.

IEM Katowice 2022 viewership statistics

The matches of all IEM Katowice 2022 stages accumulated almost 30 million Hours Watched and attracted 328K Average Viewers. FaZe Clan vs. G2 Esports Grand Final gathered more than 1.1 million Peak Viewers and became the most popular match of the tournament.

Most of the viewers watched English-language broadcasts, and Russian-language takes second place by this metric. The Vietnamese broadcasts made such a great jump in Peak Viewers that they even outpaced the Portuguese ones, which have always been in the top 3. Polish broadcasts also showed a strong increase (top 5 in terms of Peak Viewers); it should be noted that the audience of regional broadcasts in other European languages also grew noticeably.

NAVI did not manage to reach the finals, which affected the team's viewership statistics. The most popular team of IEM Katowice 2022 is G2 Esports, which amassed 12.3 million Hours Watched and drew 475.8K Average Viewers. Based on these results NAVI ranks third and second, behind G2 by 117% and 28%, respectively. FaZe Clan takes second place by Hours Watched and third place by Average Viewers. It is interesting that Team Vitality and FURIA, which dropped out of the tournament at the end of the group stage, are also in the top five by Average Viewers.

IEM Katowice has significantly improved its viewership results compared with the previous year. In 2022, the tournament accumulated 50% more Hours Watched, the Average Viewers number grew by 46% and the Peak Viewers number grew by 88%. But these are not the main achievements of the event.

IEM Katowice 2022 placed among the top 5 most popular CS:GO tournaments in the history of CS:GO. Only the majors — IEM Katowice Major 2019, ELEAGUE Major 2018, ELEAGUE Major 2017 and PGL Major Stockholm 2021 — attracted more Peak Viewers. Thus, IEM Katowice 2022 also became the most popular among CS:GO events without Major status.

Besides the general growth of CS:GO popularity, which affected the tournament's viewership numbers, interest in IEM Katowice 2022 was also boosted by the horrifying news about the events in Ukraine. The championship became really historic: IEM Katowice 2022 Grand Final will be remembered by the discipline fans for a long time as an example of really exciting and intense games.

  The most popular tournaments in the history of CS:GO  

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IEM Katowice 2022 took place from February 15 to 27. The next big championship will be ESL Pro League Season 15, which will take place from March 9 to April 10 in Germany. The first major of the year, PGL Major Antwerp 2022, is scheduled for May. Read more about it in our article.