Who are the most watched esports teams?

Every sports team wants to attract fans to their matches, be it on-site in stadiums or on TV in local and international competitions. More eyes attract more sponsors and partners, which in turn increases revenue and allows for new signings, among other things. In esports, there are rarely home stadiums that teams play in and sell tickets for, so teams and tournament organisers primarily rely on live streams on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube (in some regions, Kick or AfreecaTV) to draw eyes towards them.

During its relatively short history, some esports organisations have attracted more viewers than others. In this article, Esports Insider has worked with data and analytics platform Esports Charts to find out which are the top five most-watched esports teams in the last seven years (when records began at Esports Charts).

It is important to mention that these statistics do not include viewership from Chinese streaming platforms, X (Twitter) broadcast viewership, or some Battle Royale games. The most notable metric for measuring esports team viewership is Hours Watched, which indicates how much time the audience spends watching content from a certain event or with a certain team in it. 

The metric provides an accurate indication of the popularity of an event or an esports organisation because it takes into account both the viewership of an event and its duration. This way, we can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, compare which esports brands are the most popular globally. 

Being watched is perhaps the most important metric for an esports organisation because the more popular the brand is and the better reach it has, the more exposure its partners receive. This gives leverage to the organisation, which can command a greater income and thus spend more on creating good content and fielding the best players.

The figures below show a gap of about 200m Hours Watched between the third and fourth most popular teams, indicating just how far apart the top three are from their competition.

Team Liquid is one of the largest esports organisations in the world by many metrics, including the number of hours watched across streaming services. The storied organisation is the oldest on this list, founded in 2000. It also has the most rosters of all the teams on this list, with more than 20 teams competing under the Team Liquid banner in different regions and games. Team Liquid also operates Liquipedia, the world’s most popular esports wiki and database and a go-to source for esports tournament information. 

Team Liquid is also one of the few truly international organisations with headquarters in both Europe and North America. Despite an association with North America among some fans, Team Liquid also has a strong identity in Europe in certain esports scenes. It is actively growing its presence in Asia, where it now competes in the likes of MLBB thanks to its acquisition of two leading teams, which helped boost its metrics. The organisation also established a major esports facility in Brazil in 2023, underscoring its growth in South America.

Team Liquid’s dominance in Hours Watched is a result of its breadth. It has garnered such high numbers due to the fact it has competed in almost every popular game, and has won titles in many of them. Most recently, Team Liquid won The International 2024, the biggest Dota 2 event of the year and one of the most popular events in all of esports. This is the second The International title for Liquid after its first in 2017. 

Meanwhile, Team Liquid’s Counter-Strike team had its peak in 2019 when it was the first-ever team to win the Intel Grand Slam, a $1m prize for winning multiple ESL-organised events in one year.  In League of Legends, the organisation has won several splits in the LCS.

In total, Liquid has won more than 70 trophies in a multitude of games during its almost 25-year history. These include notable wins in PUBG, Fortnite, Rainbow Six: Siege, and StarCraft, which was the first game that Liquid entered professionally. All those performances have racked up to 864m Hours Watched for Team Liquid across the seven years. Liquid recently acquired an MLBB roster which competes in the MPL Indonesia, one of the most popular mobile game leagues in the world.

T1 differs from other esports organisations on this list because most of its large following and impressive viewership has come from a single game: League of Legends.  According to Esports charts, 88% of T1’s total views come from its main League of Legends roster. 

T1 is also interesting because it is a joint venture between South Korean telecommunications company T1 and Comcast Spectacor, making it one of the rare esports organisations owned by large companies that has steadily survived for more than a decade. The organisation now known as T1 was created in 2004 as SK Telecom T1 and has spent most of its life as a dominant force in League of Legends, although its VALORANT roster has been making waves in 2024. 

T1 is the most popular League of Legends team ever, and the most successful by far. The team has won four Worlds titles, the most of any organisation in history, and is the current double reigning world champion. The impressive viewership number is mostly fueled by the consistent performances in Worlds, with two second-place finishes and two semi-final finishes further adding to the massive amount of hours watched. The team has also won dozens of other big League of Legends tournaments, including the 2024 edition of the Esports World Cup.

In VALORANT, the team is a part of the Pacific League, a highly competitive league that also contains the likes of Gen.G and Paper Rex. Still, almost the entirety of its all-time viewership comes from League of Legends, making T1 an exceptionally unique team.

One of the most popular esports organisations across many titles, G2 Esports is a fan-favourite organisation with a unique style and approach, mostly prominent through its social media content and strategy. G2 was founded in 2014, and despite being one of the younger teams with a global reach, it is also one of the fastest-growing and most successful teams in a variety of games. G2 Esports was founded by former League of Legends player Carlos Rodriguez, who has since left the organisation. 

In-game, G2 Esports is the most dominating team in the European League of Legends, winning the most splits in history and reaching the Worlds final in 2019. Its Counter-Strike team is consistently ranked among the top five in the world despite never winning a Valve-backed  Major. G2 Esports also won the Six Invitational in Rainbow Six: Siege in 2019 and 2023 and is very popular in Rocket League. In VALORANT, G2 Esports entered the Americas league in 2024 as an Ascension team after acquiring the former Guard roster. Ever since G2 has been one of the most popular VALORANT rosters in the Americas.

One of the pioneers of European esports as we know it, Fnatic is one of the older brands on the scene and one of the most popular. Created in 2004, Fnatic has competed in dozens of games but, similar to NAVI, saw most of its success in Counter-Strike (CS). Fnatic was the first organisation to win multiple Majors, the most prestigious type of CS tournament, with three titles to its name. 

Meanwhile, in League of Legends, Fnatic is the only European team to ever win the League of Legends World Championship, having done so in the first-ever edition back in 2011. The Fnatic League of Legends team was also runner-up at Worlds 2018. In VALORANT, Fnatic has also been very successful, winning the Masters Tokyo in 2023. 

Outside of competition, Fnatic has a dedicated hardware segment and produces peripherals such as mice and keyboards.

Natus Vincere, or NAVI, is an Ukrainian esports organisation founded in December 2009. The brand is known as one of the most successful esports teams in the world, and the most popular esports organisation in Eastern Europe. The popularity of NAVI can be directly attributed to its Counter-Strike team, one of the strongest in the history of the game. 

NAVI is the only team that has participated in all 20 Counter-Strike Majors, and is a record holder for most Major finals appearances with six. The team has also won an Intel Grand Slam and has accumulated roughly 9.4m from Counter-Strike prize money during its history, per EsportsEarnings. NAVI was also the long-time home to Oleksandr ‘S1mple’ Kostyljev, one of the greatest players in the history of CS. 

Apart from CS, NAVI has rosters in a large number of games, including VALORANT, PUBG and PUBG MOBILE, Dota 2 and others. NAVI also had a successful StarCraft 2 roster for a long time, but it was disbanded in 2024. 

With esports viewership still rising, these top teams will likely continue getting more popular. But the makeup of the top five may also be challenged. Two Saudi-based esports organisations, Twisted Minds and Team Falcons, have the highest number of active rosters currently (32 and 31), and are perhaps growing their viewership the most when compared to other teams due to the sheer number of games played. 

In addition, teams from the SEA region will also benefit a lot from the upcoming, ever-popular M6 World Championship in MLBB, where the likes of Rex Regum Quon, EVOS and Bren Esports will all compete. With the growth of the MLBB scene globally, there is a strong chance that a team most notable for their MLBB success could break into the top five. 

However, given that the top three are head and shoulders above their competition, we’re unlikely to see those names — Team Liquid, G2 Esports and T1 — disappear any time soon.