IEM Katowice 2024 enjoyed a 29% higher average viewership than last year’s Groups

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IEM Katowice 2024 ended its Group Stage after eliminating 18 of the total 24 attending teams. The decisive match between Heroic and G2 Esports finished on the night of February 6, and so far the event has received significantly more viewership than its predecessor, boding well for the future of Counter-Strike as CS2 slowly builds up its new esports scene for a familiar title. 

Six teams have qualified for the playoffs of the event. G2 Esports and Team Falcons qualified through the lower bracket of their groups, ENCE and FaZe Clan were unable to win their upper bracket final match, but still qualified, and Team Spirit and MOUZ were the champions of their Groups, meaning they advanced directly to the semifinals. 

The change to Counter-Strike 2 has shaken up the Counter-Strike esports scene, with teams scrambling to come to grips with the new release, some have made steps forward, whereas other teams have been slow to adjust. Following the change to CS2, ESL quickly continued developing and optimising their esports events. The IEM Katowice 2024 brought some significant updates to the event series, including multiple new primary and secondary broadcasts.

ESL introduced new official Turkish broadcasts, began officially streaming on Chinese live-streaming platforms, and also added new Russian and Kazakh broadcasters. Critically, not all of these broadcasts are run directly by ESL, but they have partnered with already existing studios and casters to be the official broadcast partners for different languages. 

With an exciting changing Counter-Strike competitive landscape mirrored by ESL’s modern approach to generating viewership from all kinds of demographics, the question is were their efforts rewarded?

IEM Katowice 2024 Group Stage Viewership Statistics

  Viewership statistics of the Group Stage at IEM Katowice 2024 compared to the previous year  

The IEM Katowice 2024 Group Stage has marked a significant increase in viewership for the historical Polish Counter-Strike event. Despite broadcasting for fewer hours in 2024 compared to the previous year’s event, watch time increased by 11.5% to over 12M Hours Watched and the average concurrent viewers increased by 29.1%, to 291.2K AV. The event reached an overall peak viewership of 525.3K concurrent viewers, thanks to the most popular match of the stage.

The most popular match of the Group Stage was the upper bracket semifinals of Group B between ENCE and G2 Esports. ENCE completely rebuilt their team at the end of 2023, following a not-unsuccessful yet disappointing year. The team struggled to win events but managed to place highly at many, and the Finnish esports organisation took home over $700K in prize pools that year. ENCE acquired 3 players from Swedish organisation 9ine, and totally rebuilt their roster as a Polish-majority team. 

The new Polish ENCE has looked extremely strong, and in their first match of the Group Stage at IEM Katowice 2024, they defeated the #1 ranked team in the world, Team Vitality. ENCE’s next match against G2 Esports was highly watched due to G2’s own popularity mixed in with the hype and excitement surrounding this new and promising ENCE roster. The match reached 449.7K Peak Viewers, generating a peak viewership 4.8% stronger than the previous year’s most popular Group Stage match.

ENCE, a newly Polish team, defeating Counter-Strike titans at a LAN in Poland has created an electric atmosphere at the venue, and brought some exciting games to the table for online potential viewers. This had a significant effect on both the team’s viewership and Polish-language viewership.

IEM Katowice 2024 experienced a largely successful Group Stage in terms of viewership. Shifting dynamics in the competitive meta and ecosystem created exciting matches for fans, and ESL’s decision to allow more official broadcasts saw the language dynamics of the event change significantly. English became far less important for the event’s total viewership, and many different languages increased their viewership significantly compared to last year.

Although fan favourites like NAVI and Team Vitality have been eliminated from the event already, IEM Katowice 2024 promises exciting Playoffs with some of the strongest Counter-Strike teams from across the world. The Quarterfinal match between ENCE and Team Falcons begins on Friday, February 9, at 18.30 GMT. Track viewership statistics or follow the event’s schedule on the relevant tournament page, powered by Esports Charts.