Top 5 Most-Watched Esports Events
Unbeknownst to some, millions of people actually flock the stadiums just to watch their favorite esports tournament. In the past four years, the World Championships has been topping the charts in terms of viewership. Collectively, there were over 458.8 million esports viewers worldwide in 2019. This is according to Newzoo’s 2019 Global Esports Market Report.
In this list, we will give you the top five most-watched esports events of all time, with statistics from Esports Charts.
- ELEAGUE Major 2017
Held last January 22-29, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, the ELEAGUE Major in 2017, the 10th Major Championship Event of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The major was organized by the ELEAGUE Corporation. This major saw the rise of Astralis as one of the top teams in CS:GO history. This event is the 3rd consecutive major with a prize pool of $1,000,000. Astralis took the championship versus Virtus Pro.
- MSI 2019
This Mid-Season Invitational was organized by Riot Games for League of Legends last May 1-19, 2019. G2 Esports defeated Team Liquid from North America with a final score of 3-0 in the final stage. The event was hosted by Vietnam and Taiwan. In its first year, the event had a total watch time of 43.8 million hours, comparable to the first few years of The International and World Championships.
- The International 9
This annual Dota 2 World Major Championship esports event held in Shanghai, China on August 20-25, 2019 currently holds the throne of being the esports tournament with the largest prize pool. Eighteen teams shared the lucrative prize pool of $34,330,068. This is hosted by Valve and is the ninth monotony of The International.
- Fortnite World Cup Finals
This event is held in New York, USA and this is the first monotony of the tournament declared at the E3 Party Royale Celeb Pro-Am. The beginning of the final event took place last July 26–28, 2019 at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York. The total prize pool is $30 million.
1. Worlds, Worlds, Worlds and Worlds
As entrenched at the start of this article, League of Legends’ main event is an attractive one. This 2019 tournament is the conclusive number one with 3.98 million viewers and 137.9 million hours watched over its 131-hour span.