Following the lower viewing figures for the Cologne major in 2016 it’s good to see they’re
back up again for the latest major.
Not only that, but the peak viewing figures in the tournament just gone were the highest
the game has ever seen!
But it begs the question: how have the CS:GO majors been doing since the game’s release,
over 4 years ago?
This isn’t as easy to track as you might think.
Viewing them on CS:GO’s in-built tournament viewer, it only goes back to Dreamhack 2014.
And these are the figures that I’ll be going by for this video, since they’re about as
reliable as I can hope for for this analysis.
But it’s worth noting that- particularly in the Cluj Napoca tournament back in 2015-
other streaming services such as Hitbox were used and that watching matches through sites
such as this one may not have been added to the viewing figures for the major.
Now, it’s impossible for me to calculate these numbers or even to comment on the credibility
of these claims.
Dreamhack did provide figures of the tournament themselves which showed peak viewers just
shy of a million.
This number was 40,000 more than what I got for the tournament using CS:GO’s in-built
tournament viewer stats.
So I’m happy that the figures I have aren’t too different from what was officially claimed
by the tournament’s host.
So, CS:GO’s stats are what I’ll be going by!
But there were 3 majors before the in-built tournament viewer was added.
How to get the figures for these?
HMMM.
I manually went through the recordings on Youtube, keeping track of the peak viewing
figures that could be seen during the buytime of every round just here.
Fortunately, this was almost always highest on the final round and even then, it varied
very little with the rounds before, so I’m confident that I’ve got some pretty reliable
numbers for every match from the quarter finals onward for every major to date.
Here are the peak views for every major.
These were all achieved during the grand finals, with no exceptions.
You can really see the game take off in 2015 though honestly, I was surprised by how high
they were even with the first major, far back in 2013.
Remember that this whole video is talking about peaks.
Averages are far harder to work out!
But since the grand finals are all best of 3’s, we can see how the viewing numbers
vary even between different maps of the same match.
No analysis needed!
Just an interesting graph.
AS IF THERE’S SUCH THING AS BORING GRAPHS!
But a major isn’t just a final match.
You have quarter finals, semi finals and then the grand final itself.
You’d expect views to go up as the tournament progresses, and sure enough that’s what
happens.
There are a few exceptions.
Let’s take a look at these.
Dreamhack Winter 2014 is the one instance where the semi-finals were (on average) viewed
more than the grand final!
The tournament was hosted in Sweden and NIP (a very popular Swedish team) made it to the
grand finals, so I’m not sure why this would be the case.
The popular Virtus Pro and Navi did get knocked out during the semis, but the final game was
still NIP VS LDLC, a very respectable matchup that went to the 3rd map and ended with overtime,
with LDLC being the winners.
It was with this third and final map that brought the final viewing numbers up and achieved
the highest peak of any match in the tournament.
But the first 2 maps of the finals were lower than ANY of the semi-final matches.
Why was this?
It could be because the semis and finals were all played on the same day.
That’s a lot of CS:GO.
And perhaps viewers were losing interest by the 6th consecutive match and instead left
and only tuned in to watch the end.
This could explain why the next major held the final on a separate day, but semis and
finals have been on the same day since and viewing figures have only gone up as the day
has progressed.
So it’s a bit of a strange one.
Columbus 2016 has been one of the most successful majors that CS:GO has ever had.
But its quarter-finals were more viewed than its semi-finals.
But this is a bit easier to explain, since NIP, Fnatic and Virtus Pro all got knocked
out during the quarter finals.
These are all very strong and popular teams and this is reflected in their matches’
viewing numbers.
Virtus Pro VS Luminosity was the one quarter final match to be played the following day,
just before the two semi finals.
And indeed, it was watched significantly more than either of those two were.
Because of this I suspect the viewing numbers largely reflect the popularity of the teams
were playing.
Despite all this the grand final the following day still managed to be the most viewed match
of the tournament.
But is CS:GO dying?
Judging from the peak views, it seems like it’s died several times.
Then comes back again.
Could this be because Valve ‘isn’t updating’ the game?
Or maybe from the gambling ban?
I have another idea.
Viewers suffer from burn out.
This happens when too many matches are played.
What’s the point in watching a tournament when it’s just showing the same teams that
play each other every week already?
Looking at their match history, it must help that none of the big teams played in the weeks
leading up to this event.
Though looking back this seems to be normal for majors, probably because the teams take
time out to practice and to prepare for the big one.
But one way in which this major has been different has been in the amount of time since the previous.
The last was back in Cologne last July; over half a year ago!
This is the longest gap between majors that CS:GO has ever seen.
This is the number of days between the start of each major.
If we abuse the graphs by multiplying all of these days by…
OOOH…
6000, then we can see a VERY strong correlation between the number of views and how long it’s
been since the previous tournament.
I’m not saying that this is the reason, but it STRONGLY SUGGESTS that how popular
a major is depends on how long it’s been since the last one.
So it makes sense that this most recent one has done so well as it has been a record breaking
200 days (roughly) since the one before it.
Another fun fact: This tournament had a day’s gap between the qualifiers and the quarter
finals.
In the past the first quarter final match has typically been played the following morning,
just 12 hours after the previous match ended.
This day off probably doesn’t make a huge difference, but does give viewers time to
recover, to get their washing done and to get excited for the rest of the tournament.
And now the final question: how successful is CS:GO, right now?
I mean, we’ve just had an incredibly successful major that has broken all sorts of records,
but it could just be because we’ve not had a major for a while.
And the average views per stage don’t paint such a pretty picture.
Sure, this tournament saw the highest peak during the finals, but on average it’s only
been the second most watched grand finals second most watched semi finals and 3rd most
watched quarter finals that CS:GO has seen.
Actually that still sounds pretty good.
And also, remember that Cloud9 and NIP- two of the most popular teams- didn’t even make
it to this tournament!
This to me is a great sign for CS:GO that a tournament can be so strong without even
featuring two of America’s and Europe’s favourite teams.
All of the quarter-finals reached the 3rd map, which always helps the viewership by
giving all teams their moment of glory.
And although the two semis were over in 2 maps, the final was 3 very closely matched
games.
Indeed I’ve seen many people saying that in terms of games, this major has had some
of the best that CS:GO has ever had.
As for players, the week of the major saw 815,000 players connecting to CS:GO, the highest
it’s been since the Columbus major in March last year and 4th highest week of all time.
I guess that time will tell how quickly the game’s popularity will drop off following
the major.
But I’m very pleased with how it’s gone.
CS:GO may not be growing like it once was but it has shown that it can hit highs time
and time again, regardless of the questionable updates and gambling scandals that have been
thrown its way.
I’m more interested than ever to know which event Valve considers for the next major.
If it’s soon then I’m going to take that as a strong sign that Valve is confident about
CS:GO’s future.
Let’s see if the next can be as well received as this one has been.