EN DE CN BR ES RU
Image
Icon

The most viewed Dota 2 tournaments of 2022

Dota 2 had a relatively slow year in 2022, at least on the esports side. Only a dozen important... Radu M. | 5. January 2023

Dota 2 had a relatively slow year in 2022, at least on the esports side. Only a dozen important tournaments took place and the viewership was not as great as it was in previous years.

However, the game still enjoyed quite a bit of attention and we can say that it’s very much alive.

The International 11

The International 11 was the highest-viewed Dota 2 event of 2022. At its peak, it had 1.75 million viewers. This was an impressive number for a game with less than 10 million active players.

Most esports developers struggle to get even 5% of their communities to watch the big tournaments. Meanwhile, Dota 2’ world championship is regularly watched by almost a quarter of its community. This clearly proves that the game is entertaining not just for players but for spectators too.

If Valve would be willing to properly advertise its game, its year-to-year growth would probably be spectacular. But for the time being, Dota 2 is struggling to maintain its player base intact and is played only by around 460.000 average concurrent players.

It’s still a lot compared to most of the other games on Steam, but it’s peanuts compared to League of Legends, whose player base is over 100 million.

The International Dota 2 Championships

Valve Corporation

What was interested about The International 11 was that the last four matches were played separately from the rest, almost one week after the previous section of the tournament concluded. This was the first time when Valve did this and it proved to be a wise decision.

In traditional sports we regularly see this way of doing things and the logic behind it is simple: if you give people enough time to talk about your tournament, you’ll sell a lot more tickets and get a lot more views.

In the past, TI events used to last around 10 days. They were very compact and it was very easy to miss them as a Dota 2 fan. But in 2022, Valve changed the strategy and will likely continue to use the new one from now on.

PGL Arlington Major

This Dota 2 Major had 708.000 viewers at its peak and 305.000 viewers on average. It was a success from this perspective but PGL probably wanted the numbers to be a bit higher.

After all, this was the last Dota Pro Circuit Major of the year and its Grand Final was played between the same competitors that had played in the Grand Final of The International 10 and Riyadh Masters 2022: PSG.LGD and Team Spirit.

Header: Valve Corporation