PGL Arlington Major statistics before the playoffs

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The second and final DPC Major 2021/2022 is in its final stage. Twelve teams remain in the fight for the title and the cherished DPC points, and for now the Chinese teams are the favorites to win: their current performance in the PGL Major Arlington group stage is impressive to say the least. Esports Charts sums up the results of the stage and tells about its viewership statistics.

PSG.LGD and Team Aster are the only teams that did not lose a single series in the group stage — they topped Groups A and B and received the best places in the top playoffs. Along with teams from China, teams from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Southeast Asia also showed good results. Two teams from each region won a place in the playoffs winners bracket.

The participants from North and South America showed the worst results: only one team from each region qualified for the playoffs, and both Evil Geniuses and beastcoast have no margin for error — they will have to play in the lower bracket.

The playoffs begin today, August 9. PSG.LGD and BOOM Esports will be the first to encounter: you can follow the schedule of the matches and their viewership statistics on the tournament page.

Group Stage Viewership Statistics

The PGL Major Arlington 2022 group stage showed more impressive viewership statistics in general than the previous Major of the season, ESL One Stockholm 2022. However, the increase in numbers was quite expected and reasonable, but there were no significant records.

The Major accumulated more than 11.4 million Hours Watched and drew 268K Average Viewers. Based on both metrics, the championship's group stage surpassed the same stage of ESL One Stockholm: the Hours Watched number increased by 8.4%, and the Average Viewers number increased by 12%.

The growth of the statistics is certainly a positive moment for the tournament. However, we should remember that the current event features teams from China ( we should remind you that they skipped the last Major), there were more matches, and this certainly had a positive effect on the statistics.

Another important point: there were four matches in the group stage held simultaneously. The Peak Viewers number of 437.5K people (+19% compared to the Stockholm Majors) was reached at the EG vs. Entity, BOOM vs. Aster and Natus Vincere vs. Team Spirit matches. Separately, the games were not as popular as they could be. Only one game drew over 300K Peak Viewers — Evil Geniuses vs. Team Spirit.

As for the broadcast languages, the absolute leader is Russian (first place by Peak Viewers and Hours Watched), and as for the platforms, the leader is Twitch. Other languages we can single out are Portuguese, Ukrainian and Malaysian, all of which have renewed their Major's group stage records.

The most popular teams in the group stage by a significant margin are OG and Team Spirit, their matches were watched by 119K-120K Average Viewers. The Top-5 also includes Evil Geniuses with its international lineup, Outsiders (Virtus.pro) with RAMZEs back in the team, as well as PSG.LGD, the strongest team of the event at the moment.

One of the hottest topics of discussion during the Major is the contribution of community casters to tournament viewership. Independent commentators of majors are extremely popular in Russian-speaking countries, and European viewers also often prefer ordinary streamers to official studios.

The PGL Arlington Major group stage statistics showed extremely impressive numbers. The contribution of community casters to the total watch time in Russian was as much as 71%, this is the highest result in the group stages of majors. For comparison, independent streamers accounted for only 11% of the total at the group stage of WePlay Animajor 2021. In a word, without any exaggeration, one can claim that now the views of Dota in Russian are almost entirely dependent on unofficial broadcasts.

Everything is different with the English language, official streams here win by a significant margin. However, according to the statistics of the last four majors, it is clear that the share of community casters is gradually increasing.

Among the broadcast channels, the absolute leader by all indicators is the official English-language stream pgl_dota2, but the Russian-speaking streamer Nix, ex-HellRaisers player, also demonstrates similar indicators. It is he who is currently the most popular community caster of the tournament, ahead of both just_ns and gorgc. 

Nix also set new personal record by viewers, reaching 69K PV. As for other popular community creators, TpaBoMaH also achieved his highest viewership ever as he attracted over 18K Peak Viewers during the first day of group stage.

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The really important matches of the PGL Major Arlington start today. The games will now follow one after the other, and the statistics on the different games will not overlap, which will give a more complete and clear picture about the popularity of top-tier competitive Dota.