Riyadh Masters 2024 has brought together the best Dota 2 teams in the world. The tournament offers $5 million in prize money, significantly more than any other event this year, and the competitive level is very high.
Arguably, we’ve seen quite a few exciting matches so far. But something is missing and it’s not hard to guess what. The missing ingredient seems to be a passionate live audience.
Unlike other big tournaments, Riyadh Masters 2024 is played in front of a relatively small audience that sits quietly most of the time. This is not what we’re used to at huge esports events and it clearly has a negative impact on the community’s level of interest.
By all standards, this competition should be as captivating as The International. But when we look at the viewership numbers, it’s definitely not.
Riyadh Masters 2024 Viewership Numbers
Who else is HYPED for Riyadh Masters at #EWC 2024?? 🏆 https://t.co/pXecuCfdgA
— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) February 5, 2024
According to escharts.com, Riyadh Masters’ viewership numbers are roughly three times lower than those of other major Dota 2 events, such as The International 2023.
So far, this competition has had 128 hours of airtime and gathered just 22 million watched hours in total. By comparison, The International 2023 had a total airtime of around 121 hours and gathered 65,4 million watched hours.
For TI12, the number of average viewers was 541.000 and the number of peak viewers was 1,44 million. Riyadh Masters 2024 currently has 171.000 average viewers and the number of peak viewers was 318.000.
Clearly, the secret of a Dota 2 tournament’s success consists of more than just big teams fighting for a big prize pool. What makes people at home care enough to tune in and watch the action is much harder to define. But from experience, we know that prestige is a big factor.
If an esports community regards an event as prestigious, the level of interest in that event will be much higher. And it doesn’t really matter how big the prize pool is, as long as it doesn’t drop below a certain threshold.
At The International 2023, for instance, the prize pool was only $3,3 million. At the previous edition of the tournament, it had been nearly $19 million, so 600% bigger. However, the viewership numbers of the two events were almost identical.
The reason why 1,5 million fans from around the world tuned in to watch the Grand Final had to do with the prestige and the atmosphere of the tournament more than everything else combined.
Header: ESL, Esports World Cup Foundation
