The Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024, Counter-Strike’s first-ever Major in China, has recorded solid viewership numbers but suffered due to time zones.
The Major peaked at 1.3m viewers, making it the seventh-most viewed Major in Counter-Strike history, according to data platform Esports Charts. It must be noted that this number does not include Chinese viewership.
With a peak of 1.33m and an average viewer number of 316,000 the Major has seen a viewership drop when compared to the first Major of 2024, the PGL Copenhagen Major. The Danish event had a peak of 1.85m and 552,000 viewers on average, with around the same amount of air time. However, the Copenhagen Major also had 58m hours watched, compared to 32.8m for the Shanghai event.
The Major took place in China for the first time in the game’s long history and was notable for having its RMRs all take place on location in Shanghai. However, this historic moment for Asian Counter-Strike did not translate to historic views globally.
This can be attributed to time zone differences between most main Counter-Strike regions and China, meaning most matches took place in the early morning for European viewers or during the night for North American fans.
Despite lower viewership numbers from Valve’s only other CS Major in 2024, the event was the second most popular event in 2024, meaning it still beat all non-major tournaments. Third place was IEM Cologne 2024, which generated just over 1m peak viewers.
Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024’s most popular match was the grand final between FaZe Clan and Team Spirit, and the two teams were also the most popular in terms of hours watched.
FaZe attracted 8.9m hours to its matches overall, and Spirit was garnering 7.5m hours. The Russian broadcast was the second-most popular, attributing 516,000 to the overall numbers behind the English broadcast with 537,000. Interestingly, the Portuguese broadcast had 162,000 viewers,
