The season-ending event of the Overwatch Champions (OWCS) Series 2024, which took place during DreamHack Winter in Stockholm, has attracted just under 160,000 peak viewers, according to esports data platform Esports Charts.
The event was the most popular in the OWCS by far, but still struggled to reach the viewership numbers of the now-defunct Overwatch League (OWL).
The Overwatch Champions Series 2024 Finals saw a peak of 159,918 viewers and an average viewership of 94,469, making it the most popular Overwatch event of the year. It is, however, important to understand the context because the OWCS had just a single Major in 2024, and the only other large-scale tournament was the one held at the Esports World Cup.
The Major held earlier this year had 125,000 peak viewers, and the EWC tournament ended with just a little over 100,000 peak viewers.
The most popular match of the tournament was the Grand Final between Team Falcons and Crazy Raccoon, with the latter being the most popular team of the event by far with around 770,000 hours watched. The winners Team Falcons came in at third place with 600,000 and Toronto Defiant placed second, in terms of team viewership, with 654,000 viewers.
The OWCS is the newly-created esports league in Overwatch, created after the dissolution of the Overwatch League in 2023. The league, co-created by Blizzard and ESL FACEIT Group, has hosted its first Finals event over the weekend during DreamHack Stockholm.
The event was won by Saudi-based Team Falcons, ahead of former OWL teams such as Toronto Defiant and NRG Shock. It should be noted that Team Falcons fielded a roster that included several players from the former Dallas Fuel roster which won the OWL in 2022.
The event, while reasonably popular by the standards of 2024 Overwatch, is far off from the best-performing tournaments in the game’s history.
