PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 Qualifiers became most popular ever thanks to competitive matches and community casters
The first round of qualifier tournaments for the world’s first Counter-Strike 2 Major has come and gone. The tournaments hosted throughout January finalized the list of teams that would compete at the RMR events which will then decide the teams competing on the stage at Copenhagen. With Counter-Strike 2’s release shaking up the competitive scene, everyone is battling through the RMR events, and viewership is up thanks to a mixture of this hype and other happenings in the scene.
It is worth noting, that the publicly available viewership statistics for Chinese live-streaming platforms are unreliable and not suitable for our purposes. Chinese viewership may or may not have been higher than what is indicated.
Compared to the previous Qualifiers for the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, the upcoming PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 has seen far more attention from both teams and broadcasts. The increased stakes and presence of strong international contenders at these Qualifier events have boosted excitement and attention for these events, affecting the viewership.
In total, the 7 regions that hosted closed qualifying tournaments generated 5.5M Hours Watched in total. This marks a roughly 2.2M increase in Hours Watched compared to the same tournaments for the previous Major event, or +65.8%. One key reason for this increase is the many fan favourites and strong international rosters who competed in these events, which is reflected in the Peak Viewers figure.
The PGL Major Copenhagen 2024: European Qualifiers event reached 245.6K Peak Viewers, far higher than any other qualifying event held in January and much higher than any of the previous qualifying tournaments for the Parisian Major in 2023. The most popular qualifier last year, the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023: European RMR Qualifier A, could manage only 107.7K Peak Viewers. The peak was reached in 2024 while 8 separate qualifying matches were taking place simultaneously, featuring top names from the scene like Fnatic, Heroic, BIG, Team Spirit, and critically, KOI. KOI, the esports organisation belonging to ibai, entered Counter-Strike earlier this month and brought ibai along as a community caster for their matches.
245.6K Peak Viewers is an imposing figure for a Qualifier event. The RMRs which take place in February which likely reach even higher, but at the moment, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 European Qualifiers became the most popular Major Qualifier tournament ever.
Community casters were critical for the high viewership of the qualifying tournaments, and ibai reigned supreme with 62.1K Peak Viewers recorded. Gaules also reached a significant 59.4K Peak Viewers and was by far the most-watched caster of the entire series of events. The Brazilian streaming personality garnered 1.75M Hours Watched for his coverage of various events, and no one could come close to matching his power. German-speaking CS creator ohnePixel received sizeable viewership too, as well as Argentinian Counter-Strike professional forg1 and Russian-speaking Twitch streamer and commentator bySL4M.
With such a wide spread of international community casters topping the most-watched and most popular channels to cover these events, we at Esports Charts thought it would be worthwhile to look into the languages and regions which contributed the most to the overall viewership of these tournaments.
In terms of which events were the most popular, the European event stood out far ahead of the others. The European qualifying events, of which there were two, generated more than half of the total viewership, 58.9%. Most of this came from the main tournament, although the European Qualifier Decider event generated more viewership than any of the Eastern events.
Interestingly, the European Open Qualifiers was the most-watched qualifying event overall, receiving 3.8M Hours Watched. We did not include the Open Qualifier events in our statistics for this piece, but the European iteration was wildly watched. The tournament was broadcasted by some of the most popular community casters in the local European scene, buster, ohnePixel, olofmeister, and more, and even by some players.
Some players such as Dosia, smooya, and shox, broadcasted their side of the competition, allowing fans an insight into the view of a professional player. The combination of esports and live-streaming is a proven tool for success in many esports disciplines when it comes to generating viewership, and Counter-Strike is no different.
The European Qualifiers event was by far the most-watched of the events, partially due to the prestigious teams, community casters, and new wave of support for KOI. The South American Qualifier event was largely popular due to Gaules. Along with forg1 who covered the Spanish-speaking side of the Latin American scene, these two creators were responsible for 85% of the tournament’s watch time.
The North American qualifier was also largely supported by Gaules, who had a play in all of the top three tournaments' performance. The Asian qualifiers received much lower viewership than their Western counterparts, but Counter-Strike is not a popular esports title in these regions, although Counter-Strike is attempting to break into the Chinese market with the help of a Major hosted there this year.
Viewership for the Copenhagen 2024 Major Qualifiers was considerably higher than the past Major’s. Assisted along by the attendance of ibai’s esports team and the wiped slate for the esports ecosystem, it does bode well for the upcoming Major’s viewership. If the Qualifiers are anything to go by, viewership for the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 may be much higher than the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023. The only way to know for sure is to check the statistics on Esports Charts once the event has concluded.
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