ESL One Birmingham 2024 viewership mirrors 2019 edition

ESL One Birmingham 2024
Image creditL ESL FACEIT Group, Luc Bouchon

Dota 2 competition ESL One Birmingham 2024 has recorded a peak viewership of 328,345, a slight decrease from the series’ last Birmingham event in 2019.

According to Esports Charts, the tournament also garnered an average viewership of 146,560 across its nearly 80-hour airtime, around 10,000 less than in 2019.

ESL One Birmingham 2024 is the seventh most viewed ESL One Dota 2 event of all time. Its 2019 counterpart garnered around 30,000 more peak viewers. Last year’s ESL One events in Kuala Lumpur and Berlin recorded 338,239 and 507,620 peak viewers, respectively. The latter event, however, was a Dota 2 Valve Major.

This year’s event marks the first ESL One tournament to be held in Birmingham since COVID-19. Another edition was meant to be held in 2020 but it was cancelled due to the pandemic and saw the event move online.

The ESL One Birmingham 2024 grand final, which was held in the Resorts World Arena, saw Saudi Arabian esports organisation Team Falcons defeat Russian esports organisation BetBoom. The eventual winners were relegated to the lower bracket early on and had to secure victories over Team Liquid, OG and Tundra Esports to claim the trophy.

In terms of peak viewership, the grand final was the most popular match. Alongside winning the event, Team Falcons were also the most watched organisation at the tournament with over 4.4m hours watched. BetBoom placed second with 3.3m hours.

Russian-speaking platforms recorded the second-highest peak viewership with 120,971, just behind English platforms (136,226). Russia was also the most represented in terms of players with 18% of all those competing representing the country. It is worth noting that Esports Charts does not include Chinese viewership numbers.

With ESL One Birmingham 2024 over, the next and final tournament in the ESL Pro Tour will be DreamLeague Season 23.

Dafydd Gwynn