IEM Rio Major Viewership Stats – Strong But Anticlimactic

IEM Rio Major had a fantastic atmosphere. The fact that the whole event took place in front of a live audience helped a lot with the early numbers. People from around the globe tuned in to see the spectacle, which was without a doubt quite epic.

The only sad thing is that the tournament had an underwhelming and very one-sided Grand Final. It’s quite rare for a CS:GO Major to have one of its quarterfinals as the peak in terms of viewership. But that’s exactly what happened at IEM Rio Major.

Key Lessons of IEM Rio Major

The match between FURIA Esports and Natus Vincere captured all the attention and had 1.42 million viewers at its peak. By comparison, the Grand Final had only 982.000. Quite obviously, people didn’t care as much about the result between Heroic and Outsiders. They cared about the teams with whom they had created an emotional connection.

This is a very important lesson for organizers. From a competitive standpoint, it’s understandable why every single team needs to qualify and even go through open qualifiers in most cases. But if you want people to tune in, you need to bring in teams that have a storyline and a history that’s familiar to the community.

Fans don’t follow CS:GO as much as they follow the people involved in CS:GO. Everybody wanted to see Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. And every Brazilian fan wanted to see FURIA. That’s why the match between Natus Vincere and FURIA Esports was so hyped.

As for the Grand Final, Outsiders were literally outsiders, while Heroic have very few inspiring figures. And to make matters worse, Outsiders won very quickly. This match was like a Batman movie in which the villain wins in 60 minutes. From an entertainment perspective, you can’t have a worse scenario than this.

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Important Stats

IEM Rio Major was watched for a total of 69.5 million hours. Its airtime was 127 hours. The number of average viewers was 548.000. To put things in perspective, here’s how the key viewership stats of this Major compare to the key viewership stats of the last one, PGL Major Antwerp:

• Number of hours watched: 69.5 million / 68 million
• Average Viewers: 548.000 / 586.000
• Airtime: 127 hours / 116 hours
• Audience Peak: 1.42 million (quarterfinal) / 2.1 million (Grand Final)

These stats clearly show that despite the passionate crowd, the fact that the tournament took place in Brazil, meaning six hours later than the usual European time, meant that a lot of people choose to skip the action.

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To be fair to ESL, they were extremely unlucky. Normally, we see great names like Team Vitality and FaZe Clan in the Champions Stage. But this time, people only cared about two teams and both of them failed to reach the Grand Final.

Future CS:GO Majors will probably return to Europe. We already know that the next one’s location will be Paris, which is a great place for CS:GO.

Another change that would be welcomed has to do with the qualification process. The Swiss System format risks eliminating a lot of teams that large audiences really want to watch, such as Astralis and G2 Esports.