Gaming fans clamour to watch the eSports World Cup

The first edition of the eSports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ran for eight weeks and featured over 20 different gaming titles.

Team Falcons won the Club Championship prize of $7 million from the total prize pool of $60m. Team Liquid ($4m), Team BDS ($2m), Team Vitality ($1.5m) and T1 ($1.25m) rounded off the top five.

While the teams duelled on their devices, another battle raged throughout the event - the fight for viewers’ attention. Read on as we take a closer look.

A rollercoaster ride for viewership numbers

The 2024 eSports World Cup garnered fluctuating viewership numbers, which is a normal trend considering some games played at the tournament are not as popular as others.

With over 30 million Hours Watched (HW) in the first week, the tournament started with a bang. However, the numbers began to dwindle.

The viewership was down to five million HW by the seventh week, although the numbers picked up for the final week with titles such as PUBG:Battlegrounds and Rocket League boosting interest.

There was a surge in interest in week five due to the Honor of Kings and Apex Legends tournaments. They pooled in around 2.5m HW.

By contrast, the Rainbow Six championship during the same week registered only 850,000 HW. The lowest HW registered was during week six of the festival.

Eternal classic Street Fighter 6 was the most watched game and outperformed Teamfight Tactics and Fortnite, but the TFT Championship performed poorly with just 425,100 HW.

The numbers recovered in week seven as Call of Duty took the spotlight, accruing around 56 percent of the total time. The remaining hours were split almost evenly between EA Sports FC 24 and StarCraft II.

The eSports World Cup 2024 also generated major interest in the iGaming industry. Popular titles such as League of Legends sparked a surge in eSports betting.

Millions of viewers tuned in to watch the elite gamers compete, and the sportsbooks featured on comparison platform arabswin.com were inundated with wagers.

It was one of the most wagered-on events of the year, which demonstrates how much interest the tournament garnered in the Middle East and further afield.

A tournament of differing numbers

The EWC pulled in over 500m viewers who devoured 250m hours of content. The League of Legends Grand Final drew a peak viewership of 3.5m - a reminder of how the MOBA genre is still thriving.

Mobile titles also pulled their weight with Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG Mobile and Free Fire, delivering solid viewership numbers.

Established eSports heavyweights such as Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 also held their own with dedicated fans tuning in to the battle. The yet-to-be-released Tekken 8 generated decent interest, while the newly launched Overwatch 2 performed well.

Viewership was remarkably different across the games. Honor of Kings, the Women's Invitational for PUBG Mobile, and Apex Legends exceeded expectations and stood at the top of their respective game's 2024 viewership charts (excluding China for Honor of Kings).

However, Rainbow Six: Siege and StarCraft 2 never deviated from their mean underwhelming viewership patterns, while Fortnite and Rocket League could not capitalise on the EWC's grand stage.

They performed well below their viewership potential in prior tournaments this year, and that trend continued at the Riyadh showpiece.

The exciting new racing simulator Rennsport has previously caught the attention of gaming enthusiasts but barely moved the needle. Despite the large prize up for grabs, it struggled to break past 10,000 peak viewers.

It is important to understand how well the EWC performed compared to other major events in each game. For example, CS:GO's EWC numbers were solid. But they came nowhere near the jaw-dropping viewership of tournaments such as PGL Major Copenhagen 2024.

Building on the legacy

Viewership must not be the only criteria for judging the tournament’s success. The event gave unpopular titles such as Tekken 8 a platform to shine and garnered interest in the mobile eSports scene.

With plans for the 2025 edition already in the works, organisers must analyse the viewership for guidance. They must identify underperforming titles and design tailored marketing strategies to help improve their numbers.

The EWC's vision of a global, multi-game festival is an exciting idea that has captured the imagination of eSports fans worldwide.

With a little tweaking, it can become a mainstay event in the eSports calendar and be recognised like other major international sports tournaments.