Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 shows weak Opening Stage viewership due to time zones

Loading

The first stage of the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024, the final major Counter-Strike tournament of the year, has wrapped up in China. The most popular match in the Opening Stage was between Wildcard and Passion UA, which peaked at over 325K concurrent viewers. Overall, the Chinese tournament is trailing behind the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 in terms of audience reach, but things could change in the Elimination Stage.

The standout teams in the Opening Stage were The MongolZ and Team Liquid — both teams won every match and secured their spot in the next stage after just three rounds. A notable achievement was the performance of the Brazilian teams, with three making it to the Elimination Stage. On the flip side, Eastern European teams had less luck — Virtus.pro and Cloud9 were eliminated after the fourth round, while Passion UA fell just short of qualifying, losing in the fifth round after an overtime series against Wildcard.

Following the Opening Stage, eight teams have advanced to the Elimination Stage: The MongolZ, Team Liquid, GamerLegion, FURIA Esports, paiN Gaming, Wildcard, BIG, and MIBR. These teams will join the another 8 squads who received direct invites to the Elimination Stage from the tournament organizers.

Viewership Statistics of Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 Opening Stage

The viewership statistics from the Opening Stage show that the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 is trailing significantly behind the previous major held in Denmark. Compared to the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, key viewership numbers have dropped by half, with some languages seeing a decline of more than 60% from their previous peak.

The main reason for these declines is the inconvenient time zones — primary Counter-Strike audiences are in Europe and Brazil, but the Opening Stage matches took place when it was either night or early morning in these regions. As a result, the average viewership for Gaules’ channel, Brazil's most popular community caster, dropped from 111.8K to 23.3K viewers. A significant drop considering that Brazilian teams performed relatively well during the stage. Top English-language community caster ohnepixel experienced a similar trend, his average viewership fell from 34.8K to 18.8K viewers. The main PGL channels on Twitch and YouTube saw similar declines.

The only exception to this trend was Ukrainian — compared to the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, its peak viewership rose by 70%. This increase was due to the participation of the Ukrainian team Passion UA in the Opening Stage. There were no Ukrainian teams in this stage during the last major, so interest from Ukrainian-speaking viewers was minimal at the time.

It’s also worth noting the performance of Russian-language community casters. While overall peak viewership in Russian dropped by 6.3%, streamers like evelone2004 and shadowkekw saw increases in their average viewership. Their channels led the pack in terms of average viewers during the Opening Stage of the Chinese Major.

There have also been some positive shifts in viewer trends. First, audience reach on TikTok has seen a slight increase — the average number of viewers on the official PGL channel has more than doubled compared to the PGL Major Copenhagen. However, TikTok's overall share still made up less than 0.4% of the total watch hours during the Opening Stage of the Shanghai Major.

Second, aside from Ukrainian, there was also a small boost in viewership for streams in Slovak and Danish. Even Chinese broadcasts on Western platforms attracted a few more viewers than during the previous major. Still, these changes didn’t have a huge impact on the tournament’s overall viewership stats, as major languages like English, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, and Russian all saw significant declines.

The most popular matches Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 Opening Stage

The match between Wildcard and Passion UA in the fifth round of the Opening Stage peaked at over 332.1K viewers, making it the most-watched match of the stage. This was also the highest viewership ever for these teams. Passion UA also set another notable record — as mentioned earlier, the Ukrainian team has the youngest roster in the tournament, with an average player age of 19.7 years. By comparison, the oldest team in the tournament is Fnatic, with an average age of 27.

The top three most popular matches of the Opening Stage included two games each from Wildcard and Passion UA. Interestingly, Wildcard led the stage in total watch time, while Passion UA had the highest average viewership.

How much do time zone differences impact viewership statistics for the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024? We created a chart showing how the average number of viewers varies by time of day across tournaments. This data includes all Counter-Strike events in 2024 that peaked with over 100K viewers. The data reveals that peak viewership typically occurs between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM GMT, while nearly all the Opening Stage matches of the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 were held between 3:00 AM and 10:00 AM GMT, a time when most of the audience is less active.

From December 5 to 8, the Elimination Stage of the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 will take place, where the top eight teams will be determined for the playoff bracket. The first round will feature some exciting match-ups: Natus Vincere will face Team Liquid, G2 Esports will take on The MongolZ, and Team Spirit will go up against FURIA Esports, featuring FalleN, the godfather of the Brazilian Counter-Strike scene. Fans can track results and viewership stats on Esports Charts.