Most popular tournaments in February 2022

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The last month of winter has come to an end, and esports season (albeit overshadowed by the tragic news from Ukraine) is now in full swing. League of Legends and ML:BB regional leagues are in full play, the first part of DPC 2021/2022 season ended, and several notable events were held in CS:GO. Esports Charts breaks down the most popular tournaments in February 2022.

Top events in February

At the end of the month, MPL leagues started in Southeast Asia, where ML:BB competitions are a huge success. The tournament in Indonesia peaked at 1.127 million viewers in the second week; it happened during the match between ONIC and RRQ Hoshi, the most popular team in the region. And this is a record audience for esports in February.

MPL ID Season 9 was just a bit ahead of the IEM Katowice 2022, top CS:GO event of the month. The championship was held on LAN for the first time in two years, and fans were finally allowed to Spodek. The decisive match of the event between FaZe Clan and G2 Esports peaked at 1.122 million viewers, which is only 0.5% less than that of MPL.

All other competitions in February attracted less than a million viewers at peak. The third place went to LCK Spring 2022, where the match between T1 and DAMWON Gaming gathered over 827K people. Note that the Faker’s team is unbeatable in the league (12:0) and for the first time in the last three years has all the chances to claim the title.

The top five also included another CS:GO tournament: the group stage of BLAST Premier Spring 2022. The most popular game of the tournament was played in January, and February's top match of the tournament was held between NAVI and NiP with more than 533K viewers.

The top 5 is closed by another regional league in LoL. During the LEC Spring 2022 match between G2 Esports and Rogue, up to 396K people watched the broadcast of the match.

What was followed by the English-speaking audience?

The English-speaking audience does not follow mobile esports much, so IEM Katowice 2022 turned out to be the leader by viewers. The triumph of FaZe Clan was simultaneously watched by up to 619K viewers on English broadcasts. It should be noted that the gap between the tournament and second place in terms of peak viewers was as much as 55%.

The second place by the English language went to the event held as part of the Twitch Rivals series. Streamer Bowl III has traditionally brought together teams consisting of professional Fortnite players, amateurs, and NFL stars. On the day of the event, up to 284K viewers of English-language streams were simultaneously on the streams of the competition.

With the start of the Challengers stage, the Valorant audience has become more active. At the VCT 2022 North America Stage 1 Challengers, up to 256K viewers were present simultaneously on the Sentinels vs NRG broadcasts.

The top 5 is closed by two leagues in LoL. In Europe (LEC), viewers were most interested in the match between G2 Esports and Rogue, which peaked at 239K people, and in North America (LCS) the game between Evil Geniuses and Cloud9 gathered up to 230K English-speaking viewers.

What did the audience of Russian-speaking countries watch?

Esports fans from the CIS countries keep to what they traditionally watch: they are still primarily interested in CS:GO and Dota 2, so only tournaments in these two disciplines made it into the top 5.

The first two places by the Russian language went to the Counter-Strike competitions, and the record audience only followed NAVI’s matches. At IEM Katowice 2022, over 205K people gathered during the semifinals with the participation of G2 Esports; and at BLAST Premier more than 178K spectators watched the game of NAVI against NiP.

The rest of the top went to Dota events. The top 3 was rounded out by the DPC EEU 2021/22 regional final: the final game between Virtus.pro & TI10 champions from Team Spirit attracted up to 131K viewers at the peak.

It is noteworthy that the quite popular Western European division only took fifth place this time around (63K spectators during the final between Team Liquid and Gladiators), it was outplaced by D2CL Season 7, which peaked at 71K viewers during the match of NAVI against Nemiga.

What did the Twitch audience watch?

February turned out to be the month of CS:GO on Twitch. Three channels broadcasting IEM Katowice 2022 made it to the top 5. The first two places went to the English-language streams from ESL, and the peak on each fell on matches involving FaZe Clan. 

The main ESL channel gathered over 550K people during the final of the tournament, and the secondary channel peaked during the group stage match between FaZe and NAVI (210K people). The fourth place in the top was taken by the Russian-language broadcast of the tournament conducted by Maincast with 205K people at the semifinal between NAVI and G2 Esports.

The Korean broadcast of LCK also made it to the top 5 on the platform: more than 207K people watched the game between DWG KIA and T1. Twitch Rivals’ channel closes the rating: up to 191K people were concurrently watching Streamer Bowl III event.

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