IEM Sydney 2023 caught up with past tournaments in viewership, did so before the start of the playoffs

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IEM Sydney 2023, the first international CS2 event, kicked off on the 16th of October featuring a double-elimination Group Stage. MOUZ and G2 Esports secured the top seed of their respective groups, and ENCE, FaZe Clan, BetBoom Team, and Complexity also qualified for the Playoffs. 

The IEM event features a prize pool of $250K USD and the winner of the event will directly qualify for the IEM Katowice 2024 tournament. All eyes are on the Australian tournament to see how the new Counter-Strike title stacks up against CS:GO as a major esports game. Viewership for the event has been high, and the 2023 event has already almost surpassed the previous two IEM Sydney tournaments in both watch time and peak viewership.

IEM Sydney 2023 Group Stage Viewership

In total, the event has received 4.1M hours of watch time so far. Although the tournament is the first look at CS2 as a major esports title, community casters were not receiving high viewership for the event. Many Counter-Strike streamers and ex-professional Counter-Strike players covered the event, but the large majority of viewership for the event was generated by official broadcasts and established top community casters like Gaules.

The Peak Viewers figure of 263.5K was reached early in the Group Stages, as FaZe and NAVI met in the lower bracket semifinals. NAVI brought a slightly different roster to Sydney as s1mple could not attend the event, so their coach B1ad3 stepped into the fray. NAVI was ultimately eliminated from the event by FaZe Clan, and some fans have criticised how this came to be.

The first round of games in the Group Stages were held as Bo1 matches, which some fans and professionals are against, preferring the more extensive Bo3 format. The effect of the Bo1 matches was seen immediately, as FaZe were knocked into the Lower Bracket in their first Bo1 against GamerLegion. This led to them playing Team Vitality and NAVI early in the event, knocking out two fan-favourite teams before FaZe exacted revenge against GamerLegion in the Lower Bracket Final.

Ignoring the effect of Bo1s on the competitive nature of the event, FaZe Clan’s expulsion to the Lower Bracket had a significant effect on viewership. Their games through the Lower Bracket were some of the most popular matches at the event, and it seems that the first-round Bo1s had a positive impact on the viewership of the event. 

With the combined forces of being the first international CS2 and FaZe Clan’s tear through the Lower Bracket, viewership for the IEM Sydney event was exceptionally high, especially in comparison to previous IEM Sydney tournaments. 

Comparison to previous IEM Sydney events

  IEM Sydney events compared by peak concurrent viewers  

Comparing the Peak Viewers of the past IEM Sydney events to the ongoing one, IEM Sydney 2023 ranks slightly behind the previous two. However, IEM Sydney 2023 achieved this Peak Viewers figure in the Group Stage, whereas the previous two events generated their peak viewership during the Grand Final. The Playoffs stage of IEM Sydney 2023 will kick off on October 20th, and the Grand Final is to be played on the 22nd of the same month. Viewership for IEM Sydney 2023 will undoubtedly eclipse the previous two events by a significant margin.

IEM Sydney 2018 held the previous Group Stage Peak Viewers record for the IEM events in Australia, when the titan SK Gaming roster was eliminated by the event by local Australian team Greyhound Gaming. It was a hugely popular match and a completely unexpected result from a local underdog team, and it amassed 137K Peak Viewers. In comparison, the FaZe Clan and NAVI match at the 2023 iteration almost doubled this viewership. In both 2018 and 2019, the final matches of events were the only games of both tournaments to receive a higher PV than the FaZe Clan and NAVI match at IEM Sydney 2023.

Viewership for IEM Sydney is on the rise, and the Playoffs for the event will surely set new records for the Australian tournament series. Keep an eye on the IEM Sydney 2023 tournament page, where viewership for the Playoffs will be updated throughout the event as the statistics become available to us.