CS:GO’s IEM Katowice 2023 concluded over the weekend, with the competition recording a significant decrease in peak viewership compared to last year’s event.
The event, which was won by European organisation G2 Esports, garnered a peak viewership of 712,534, according to esports data platform Esports Charts. IEM Katowice 2022, which also featured G2 in the final, recorded a peak viewership of over 1.1m.
Despite this drop in viewership, IEM Katowice 2023 is still the 7th most popular IEM event and the fourth highest IEM to take place in the Polish city. However, IEM Katowice 2023 recorded lower average viewership and total hours watched compared to last year’s event.
IEM Katowice Major 2019 still remains the destination’s most popular IEM event, recording 1.3m peak viewers. Meanwhile, PGL Major Stockholm 2021 is the highest-viewed CS:GO esports event recorded on Esports Charts, garnering an impressive 2.7m viewers.
For the 2023 tournament, G2 Esports was once again the most popular esports organisation at the event, securing the highest number of average viewers (355,200) and total hours watched (6m). The organisation that placed second on hours watched this year was Team Liquid (5m), with NAVI (304,500) placing second in average viewership. Both organisations were knocked out in the semi-finals by G2 Esports and Heroic, respectively.
Despite lower viewership at IEM Katowice, the CS:GO player base is healthier than ever. The game broke its all-time concurrent online player record on February 11th. Prior to IEM Katowice’s semi-final match-ups, the game’s online player count totalled above 1.3m for only the second time, according to StreamDB, beating its previous record that was set in 2020.
CS:GO wasn’t the only esports event taking place at IEM Katowice. ESL Gaming’s new $500,000 (~£438,998) sim-racing series ESL R1 commenced its inaugural event over the weekend.