The Esports World Cup’s Overwatch 2 tournament has recorded a peak viewership of 100,188, a decrease in comparison to last month’s Overwatch Champions Series 2024 Major.
The Overwatch event, which took place at the Qiddiya Arena, also had an average viewership of 33,310 over its 51-hour runtime, according to esports data platform Esports Charts.
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This average viewership is just a third of what the Overwatch Champions Series 2024 Major averaged (97,364). However, this was over a much lower runtime of around 27 hours. Meanwhile, peak viewership only decreased by 25,000.
Overwatch was announced to be a part of the Esports World Cup back in May after its esports ecosystem had undergone some serious changes. After the Overwatch League was shut down towards the end of 2023, a deal was reached between the ESL FACEIT Group and Activision Blizzard leading to the creation of the Overwatch Champions Series.
The Esports World Cup Overwatch event was won by Japanese organisation Crazy Raccoon who took down the OverActive Media-owned organisation Toronto Ultra in the Grand Final. Despite finishing as runners-up at the event, Toronto Ultra was the most popular team at the event by hours watched with 674,800 compared to Crazy Raccoon’s 487,800.
Toronto Ultra may have come second, but the English-speaking broadcasts were by far the most watched according to peak viewership with 68,900. The other popular language broadcasts were Arabic (19,997), Spanish (14,378), Japanese (11,492) and Portuguese (9,017).
In terms of streaming platforms Twitch (89,475) continued to dominate over TikTok Live (13,867) whilst YouTube (5,401), Afreeca TV (5,018) and Kick (979) all had a smaller portion of the viewership.
It is worth noting that Esports Charts does not measure viewership from Chinese streaming sites and that Esports Charts was named as an official partner for the Esports World Cup.
The Esports World Cup is currently underway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and features more than 20 tournaments and a $60m (~£48.1m) prize pool, many of which are still underway. The Esports World Cup Foundation, the organisers of the Esports World Cup, is backed by the Saudi Arabian government. As such, the multi-title event has faced criticism from teams and the community over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
