BLAST.tv Paris Major’s viewership was weaker than we’d hoped

BLAST.tv Paris Major is finally over. Team Vitality won a much-deserved trophy that will be forever remembered as the last Major trophy in CS:GO. As we all know, this Summer, Valve will make the transition to Source 2 and all subsequent CS:GO tournaments will be played in the new iteration of Counter-Strike.

Given the importance of the Paris Major and the growth of CS:GO over the past 16 months, everyone was expecting this tournament to have great viewership numbers.

And, indeed, a lot of people watched the action. But not as many as we had hoped. The Grand Final between Vitality and GamerLegion had 1.52 million viewers at its peak. The average number of viewers, on the other hand, was only 507.000.

Paris Major viewership statistics

CS:GO has reached 1.09 million average concurrent players. The game is absolutely huge right now and it’s estimated that more than 20 million people play it at least once a month. Many play it quite frequently, which should naturally make them interested in its esports side.

When you’re trying to become a better player, one of the things that you can do is watch superstars like Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev compete in top CS:GO events. So the bigger the game’s player base becomes, the higher the viewership numbers of its professional tournaments should get.

But in the case of the Paris Major, the numbers don’t look that impressive. These numbers are provided to us by Escharts and they clearly show a decrease in the community’s interest in CS:GO events.

To put things into perspective, IEM Rio Major, which took place in the Autumn of 2022, had 548.000 average concurrent viewers and 1.43 million viewers at its peak. It was watched for a total of 69.5 million hours.

BLAST.tv Paris Major had a higher peak (1.52 million) but much lower numbers overall. It was watched for just 59 million hours.

The question is: will Source 2 tournaments do any better? And the answer is: yes, they will almost certainly do better because the game will have a higher quality and some of the most legendary casters are coming back from retirement.

ESL’s strategy should probably change as well, at least a little bit. Valve could also help because they own the game and as a result, they can make it more obvious to players that something important is taking place.

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