Counter-Strike 2’s very first Major has recorded a peak viewership of 960,000 following the conclusion of its Elimination Stage.
The PGL Major Copenhagen, which saw its Opening Stage begin on March 17th, has also registered an average viewership of 477,969 over 77 hours of airtime, according to Esports Charts.
The PGL Copenhagen Major is the first Major to take place on CS2, the Valve-published game that was released in September last year. It comes 10 months after the last CS:GO Major that was held in Paris and recorded a peak viewership of over 1.5m.
Despite the event running into some game-related issues due to the current state of CS2, such as a player’s game freezing during a crucial round in the qualify-or-go-home game, the viewership before playoffs has been impressive. So far, PGL Copenhagen Major 2024 is only averaging 40,000 viewers less in terms of average viewership than the whole BLASTtv Paris Major. This average figure will likely increase as the competition reaches its latter stages.
According to Esports Charts, Copenhagen Major’s Elimination Stage has recorded similar statistics to the Legends Stage at the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023. The peak viewership has slightly increased (0.05%), with a more significant increase seen in average viewership (4.7%).
So far the game with the highest peak viewership saw Brazilian organisation paiN, going up against Ukrainian organisation NAVI in the elimination stage. This is rather unsurprising considering the large Brazilian fanbase within Counter-Strike. The three most popular teams at the Major so far, via hours watched, have been FURIA (6m), Imperial (5.5m) and paiN (5.4m), all of which are Brazilian teams.
Portuguese streams have also been successful for the Major, coming second in terms of peak viewership (326,027) just behind English (355,635), and above Russian (210,947) language platforms.
For the first time in Counter-Strike Major history, PGL announced that the tournament would be streamed on Kick, but the streaming platform has not found the success it had hoped for so far. Twitch remains the most used platform with 720,929 peak viewers whilst YouTube holds second place (242,007), TikTok third (3,439) and Kick fourth (2,592).
With the playoff stage of the Major set to start on March 28th, it will be interesting to see how the first CS2 Major’s viewership will compare to previous CS:GO Majors. The state of CS2 has been a hot topic for fans and pundits alike since its release with many — such as professional player Russel ‘Twistzz’ van Dulken — stating that it is not ready for Major play and needs to be updated
All eyes will be on the Royal Arena in Copenhagen to see if CS2 can replicate the same viewership heights as its predecessor.
