ESL Pro League viewership disappoints again

ESL Pro League Season 17 is over and the viewership numbers are, once again, disappointing. Despite the talent’s best efforts to make the tournament exciting for the audience, people just didn’t show the level of interest that we expected.

S-tier CS:GO events from previous years used to attract a lot more people. The show was captivating and there isn’t much to criticize about the production.

The organizers did their part quite well, and everyone involved in the event had a good contribution. But the number of average viewers was just 138.000, for a game with a player base of around 20 million!

Observations and key numbers

According to Escharts, ESL Pro League Season 17 had 517.000 peak viewers. The Grand Final between FaZe Clan and Cloud9 generated a reasonable level of interest but it was still not the huge success that people were hoping for given the circumstances.

To understand why the match was so important, we must consider the two finalists. Cloud9 hadn’t played in the Grand Final of an S-tier CS:GO event for almost a year. And FaZe Clan needed this trophy to complete their Intel Grand Slam quest.

Thanks to their 3-1 victory over Cloud9, FaZe won an additional $1 million. For any fan of the organization, this was a huge moment and the culmination of the epic string of successes obtained in 2022. But only half a million people tuned in to watch their struggle.

One match that generated a lot of interest was the semifinal between FaZe Clan and Natus Vincere. That match had 456.000 average viewers. The other semifinal, between Ence and Cloud9, had only 310.000.

This clearly shows that people don’t really care that much about the importance of the match itself within the tournament. They care about the teams and the people involved in that match. And they follow their stories.

We’ve seen something similar at IEM Rio Major, where the match between Natus Vincere and FURIA Esports had a lot more viewers than the Grand Final, despite being just a quarterfinal!

Another thing that negatively impacted the numbers was the small venue. The audience was obviously not that numerous and that gave the tournament the feeling that it was just an A-tier or even a B-tier event.

In esports, people clearly tune in to watch a grand spectacle, and only a large arena can provide that. In the future, perhaps organizers will take note of this and do things differently.

Header: ESL