PUBG Global Series 2023 Phase 2 becomes fifth-most-watched event in discipline, following the success of Phase 1

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The PUBG Global Series 2023 Phase 2 event took place between the 10th and 20th of August in Riyadh. $2M USD were up for grabs at the Saudi Arabian event, and the tournament also functions as a qualification for the PUBG Global Championship 2023. This year marks the return of the Global Series after a 2020 cancellation, and this event was the first event to run the new “SUPER” competitive ruleset, which bridges the gap between in-game ranked mode and the competitive esports mode. 

The team Soniqs took first place, winning $600K and taking home 300 PGS Points, which decide who qualifies for the 2023 PUBG Global Championship. Soniqs have officially qualified for the championship now, with second-place Twisted Minds and fourth-place Danawa e-sports at Phase 2 also making it to the final event. Question Mark, who finished third in Phase 2, unfortunately, did not qualify as they didn’t compete in the Phase 1 event. They still have a chance to book a ticket for the Global Championship through the regional qualifier tournaments.

Gamers8 Esports continue to host large tournaments, especially in terms of prize pool. $2M USD were up-for-grabs at the event, making the tournament the only non-Global Championship event to have more than a million USD available for the prize pool. The event drew in solid viewership, and by the end, it had become the fifth most-watched tournament in PUBG history. Let’s take a look at how this event drew in such viewership.

PUBG Global Series 2023 Phase 2 Viewership statistics

The event received 163.4K concurrent viewers at peak during the penultimate round of the Grand Finals event, but viewership remained consistent throughout the event. From the Bracket Stage of the event onwards, the concurrent viewership was consistently breaking the 100K viewers mark at peak. In regards to the most popular matches of the event, this was entirely made up of the Grand Finals rounds, of which there were 18.

4.2M Hours Watched were recorded for this event, with the majority of these coming from Asian YouTube channels. The PUBG SEA channel for Vietnamese fans was by far the most popular channel of the event, with almost double that of the second-most-watched channel for the event. PUBG SEA collected 947.3K hours of watch time, with the Thai PUBG YouTube channel slotting in second with 489K hours of watch time.

Community casters were not relevant for this particular event, as most of the channels covering the event were dedicated PUBG esports channels. A few community casters were covering the event on an amateur basis, but these channels were overshadowed by the large and more dedicated channels for PUBG broadcasting.

Interestingly, although the watch time came mainly from Asian channels, the English-speaking Twitch channels covering the event were more present in the form of Peak Viewers.

As you would expect considering the Vietnamese PUBG YouTube channel was so popular, Vietnamese was the most popular language of the event. However, it wasn’t as dominating as you might expect. Behind Vietnamese, followed English and some other Asian languages. 

SEA is a region which is dominated by mobile games, and despite not being a mobile game itself, PUBG is hugely popular in the SEA region, perhaps due to the influence of its mobile game counterpart. Interestingly, following behind the Asian languages we can see some other languages that highlight the popularity of the mobile game peer. The bottom three listed languages are from regions where mobile gaming is hugely popular, and the popularity of PUBG mobile might have something to do with the esports viewership success of the PC game.

In collaboration with DoHuya, a platform for analysis of Chinese live-streaming platforms DouYu and Huya, we analysed the viewership for the PGS Stage 2 as it was broadcasted live. The coverage for the event on Huya reached a Peak Heat Index of 7.1M and 5.5M was recorded for the coverage on DouYu.

Important to note, Heat Index is not a measurement of peak concurrent viewers. Rather it is a singular metric that aims to cover the overall popularity and activity of a channel. The more viewer interaction and chat messages, the higher the Heat index. 

In comparison to the Chinese viewership we analysed for our LPL Summer 2023 article, the PGS was not able to compete with LPL’s 66M+ Peak Heat Index on Huya. Nevertheless, the game’s Average Heat Index of 2.35M on DouYu is very comparable to the Average Heat Index achieved by the LPL. Although the PGS was not able to compete with the LPL at peak times, it averaged out not far behind.

PUBG most-watched tournaments comparison

The 2023 Global Series Phase 2 event was one of the most-watched PUBG events in history. The event ranks fifth per all-time watch time and managed to be more watched than the PUBG Global Championship 2019 and other global events. 2021 was the most successful year for PUBG esports, as seen in the graphic, with the Global Championship and Global Invitational.S of that year performing highly in watch time. 

The Global Series from this year have performed exceptionally well, the Phase 2 event as we have covered but the Phase 1 event also received significant viewership. The Phase 1 event took place in April earlier this year and it recorded 3.6M Hours Watched throughout its runtime, which is enough to rank 8th per watch time for the discipline overall.

Comparing Phase 2 directly to Phase 1, it’s clear that the viewership has grown overall. This may be due to the Global Championship inching closer as hype builds up around this event, or possibly due to this event’s rankings having more of a direct impact on the qualifications for the final event of the year. 

It’s hard to say if these Global Series’ viewership will translate into more viewership for the Global Championship, as the Global Series has not taken place in recent years and only returned in 2023. Nevertheless, the last two years of PUBG esports have been the most successful for the discipline in terms of watch time, and the Global Series might be building up hype and awareness for audiences to tune into the Global Championship this November.

The PUBG Global Championship 2023 was recently announced to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, this year. The event will run from the 18th of November to the 3rd of December. More details are yet to be announced, but the biggest and most international PUBG event for the year always draws in solid viewership and builds up hype for the discipline. Keep an eye out for the various regional tournaments that act as qualifiers on our PUBG: Battlegrounds page.