BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 becomes third most popular CS:GO tournament ever
The BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 concluded yesterday, with Team Vitality beating GamerLegion 2-0 in the Grand Final to clinch the crown. Being the last-ever CS:GO Major, it got into the all-time top fives for most watched and popular events in the series, alongside setting a few language records, giving the game a fitting send-off before we herald the arrival of Counter-Strike 2.
The 19th Major in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive history was the first time the Danish organizers hosted such a competition. Filled with upsets and surprising performances, it ended with Team Vitality sealing its berths in the IEM Cologne 2023 and the BLAST Premier World Final. The winner also took home $500K, while GamerLegion pocketed $170K.
It was also a record event for dupreeh, who claimed a fifth career Major to outright hold the individual record and become the richest and most decorated CS:GO professional player ever. He is also the only pro to play all 19 Majors that Valve has organized.
Essential stats and top matches from the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
The BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 did 1.52M PV during the Grand Final of the Champions Stage. Unsurprisingly, four of the five most popular games were from this phase of the competition, with the other one coming from the Legends Stage, between FaZe Clan and NAVI, who share quite the classic rivalry. There was also the small matter of qualification for the Champions Stage at stake.
Heroic, FaZe Clan, and Team Vitality appeared twice each on the list of most popular games from the tournament. The failure of NAVI — perhaps the most famous CS:GO side today — to make more appearances on such lists was due to its early elimination, with the Ukrainian side falling at the Legends Stage.
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This CS:GO event also hit 58.9M HW and 507K Average Viewers over an airtime of 116 hours. Team Vitality was the most popular side by average concurrent viewership, 1.28 times more than the second-best team.
Two popular orgs made the top five despite not really doing well in the Legends Stage and missing out on the Champions Stage, pointing to their enduring popularity among fans. Moreover, another unit that surprised everyone with its run was atop the watch hours chart but nowhere near the top five when it came to average viewership.
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English continued to be the dominant language at this tournament, improving on its performance from the previous Major, the IEM Rio Major 2022. One reason for this was the fall in Portuguese viewership thanks to the so-so performances of Brazilian sides at the event.
There were also records set for broadcasts in overall Romanian esports (24.7K, with the previous one being 14K at the Free Fire EMEA Invitational 2021) and Ukrainian (more than 60K PV, beating the previous best from the final of The International 2022, which did 46.1K PV).
French also created a new CS:GO record of 66.8K PV, handily overtaking the old record of 30K from the IEM Beijing Online 2020 Europe. What helped was that Team Vitality claimed the title on home soil, which ensured the competition reached a wider audience than expected.
Russian also benefitted ever so slightly, raising its share by 3.85%, despite no player from the nation appearing in the decisive stage. Polish also rose by 3.4%, doing record broadcast numbers at the Legends Stage for Peak Viewers.
Most popular CS:GO Majors of all-time
The BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 ended up as both the third-most-popular Major and the third-most-popular tournament in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in general, behind just the Antwerp edition from last year and the 2021 iteration from Stockholm. It also made the top five for most watched such competitions ever.
Despite the non-performance of heavily-favored sides like NAVI, G2 Esports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, ENCE, and Fnatic, the fact that it was the last-ever Major in CS:GO seemed to bring in audiences in droves. Of course, consistently followed and successful teams like Heroic, FaZe, and Team Vitality did do well, so their displays would also have helped in terms of viewership.
As fans and officials bid adieu to CS:GO, there is no doubt that it was an industry-defining esports discipline. In fact, the last major held in the discipline achieved several new records, which Esports Charts will look at, alongside the long history of its Majors, and name all the biggest records there were. We will also list the most watched teams and evaluate the popularity of prominent organizers, including PGL, ESL, BLAST, ELEAGUE, etc.
Fans looking forward to CS2 esports don’t have to wait long, with its first official tournament emanating from Copenhagen in 2024 spring.
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