End of FaZe's win streak, Cloud9's audience growth — BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023 Major Takeaways

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BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023 ended in Copenhagen on November 26. One of the last tier-S Counter-Strike 2 tournaments of 2023 gathered 411.6K Peak Viewers, slightly falling short of the metric of a similar event last year. 

FaZe Clan and Team Vitality faced off in the decisive match of the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023. This was the fourth Grand Final in a row for KarrigaN's team, but they failed to win the fourth consecutive title. Team Vitality not only ended FaZe's 18-game winning streak but also did so with a confident score of 2:0. In the first map of the Grand Final, Vitality crushed its opponents with a score of 13:3, and FaZe couldn't recover from such a blow on the second map. HLTV.org named ZywOo, the sniper for Team Vitality, the most valuable player of the tournament. This award was the 17th (and the fourth in 2023) for the 23-year-old Frenchman: for now he looks like the main contender for player of the year title.

Usually, tournaments’ final matches attract the largest audience, far surpassing other series in terms of viewership. However, this difference turned out to be insignificant at the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023. The Grand Final between FaZe Clan and Team Vitality was watched by 411.6K Peak Viewers — only 6K more than the semi-final match between Team Vitality and Cloud9. 

There were many interesting stories behind the grand final, such as FaZe's win streak and the clash between ropz and ZywOo, but the series itself was quick and ended in a one-sided victory. At the same time, the battle between Vitality and Cloud9 in the semi-final was much more intense: the teams won each other's map picks with additional rounds, and the outcome was decided on the third map. It can be said that it was thanks to the exciting semi-final that the difference in viewership with the final turned out to be minimal.

Cloud9 became one of the most popular teams at the BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023 — it surpassed other teams in terms of total Hours Watched and also took second place by Average Viewers per match, and it was pretty expected. Firstly, BoombI4 joined the team not long before the tournament, taking over the captain position and replacing sh1ro in the starting five. With his arrival, three players from the star lineup of Natus Vincere — BoombI4, Perfecto, and electroNic — reunited in Cloud9, and such stories always generate a great deal of interest for viewers. Secondly, Cloud9's popularity at the tournament is directly related to its match-ups: the team played against all the most high-profile participants in the championship: Natus Vincere, FaZe Clan, Team Vitality, and also against the Danes from Heroic on their "home arena."

FaZe Clan played in both Grand Finals

The BLAST Premier Fall Final 2023 fell slightly behind in key metrics compared to the Spring Final, but this is fairly typical for the BLAST series. Historically, the spring seasons tend to attract more viewers than the fall seasons. However, compared to last year, the Fall Final 2023 had approximately the same audience reach as the Fall Final 2022. The current tournament had slightly fewer Peak Viewers (a decrease of 2.5%), but more Average Viewers (an increase of 10%). The discrepancy in total Hours Watched happened due to the different durations of the tournaments, with 41 hours this year compared to 52 hours last year.

BLAST Premier: World Final 2023 will be the season's final chapter, featuring Team Vitality which earned its spot by winning the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, and also FaZe Clan and MOUZ who qualified as champions of the 17th and 18th seasons of the ESL Pro League. Heroic received an invitation after its victory at the BLAST Premier: Spring Final 2023. Four more participants were determined based on the BLAST ranking — G2 Esports, Natus Vincere, ENCE, and Cloud9 secured their spots.