IEM Katowice 2023 viewership and impressions

IEM Katowice is over, G2 Esports won a great victory against Heroic, and we can now ask an important question: how did this edition of the famous CS:GO event perform relative to previous editions and other tournaments?

The competition itself was really exciting to watch. There were lots of captivating matches and storylines, and some of the players from the young generation stunned the greatest legends of this esport.

In particular, the duel between Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov and Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev was better than an action movie. We now know that G2 are easily the strongest team in the world and we’ve practically entered a new era.

This was their second $1 million event win in a row. If they get a top-4 finish at ESL Pro League Season 17 too, there will be no doubt left in anyone’s mind that 2023 will be theirs.

IEM Katowice viwership

CS:GO is rapidly growing. The game currently has more than 760.000 average concurrent players and is roughly double the size of Dota 2. Normally, with so much growth in the player base, you would expect the tournament numbers to skyrocket. After all, esports is a big part of CS:GO and has been since the beginning.

But unfortunately, what we see is actually a major decline in people’s interest. The game is played by nearly 20 million people and only around 3-5% of them want to see the world’s best players compete.

Given how good those players are and the overall quality of each event, it’s a bit strange that so few people tune in when the best CS:GO in the world is being played.

The numbers do not lie. According to Esports Charts, IEM Katowice 2023 had only 234.000 average concurrent viewers. At its peak, the tournament was watched by 708.000 people. But that was reached only in the Grand Final between G2 and Heroic.

The other playoffs matches did much worse and had around 450.000 average concurrent viewers.

The previous IEM Katowice edition

In 2022, the exact same tournament was watched by a lot more people. The Grand Final had 1.12 million viewers at its peak and the number of average viewers throughout the tournament was 328.000. That’s almost 100.000 more than in 2023! Meanwhile, the game grew enormously in the last 12 months, going from around 568.000 average concurrent players to more than 760.000.

Anyone who understands these numbers is probably wondering: what are we doing wrong? Why isn’t Valve advertising its esports events a bit more aggressively?

Header: ESL