With the return of two Majors in 2022, the game had an increase of 8.8% in hours watched.
Last Wednesday, Esports Charts released the complete data of the CS:GO audience during 2022. The Valve FPS grew its audience by more than 8% last year and became the second most watched esports of the year, staying behind only League of Legends.
Despite the general growth, the numbers of CS:GO on Twitch fell by around 7%, but the return of two Majors in the year and also the normalization of the tournaments after the pandemic helped the spikes of the audience grow bigger than they were in 2021.
General CS:GO performance in 2022
Counter-Strike put up 449.7 million hours watched last year, 8.8% more than in 2021. February, May, and November were the best months in terms of audience for CS:GO. Those months saw the top tier tournaments of the esport, such as IEM Katowice, PGL Antwerp Major, and IEM Rio Major, respectively.
Even though the game had higher numbers, the calendar of last year received 10% fewer tournaments than it did in 2021. Still, the return of the presential tournaments was more attractive than a lot of online tournaments that took place in the years of the pandemic.
Most watched languages and channels
Compared to 2021, last year didn't show any difference in terms of the language and channels most watched. English, Portuguese and Russian, in that order, were the most watched, like it was in 2021. But, for Russian broadcasts, there was a decrease of 27%. That happened due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. With that conflict, many channels chose to change to the Ukrainian language.
Talking about the streamers, Gaules topped the board for the second year in a row, followed by the ESL official channel that broadcast in English. The most watched channels are, in general, the organizers of tournaments. But, Brazilian streamer mch_agg and American streamer fl0m grew a lot and appeared in the top 10 most watched CS:GO channels.
Even though Twitch dropped 7.7% in hours watched of CS:GO, the platform was the principal one used to watch the game. It represented 87% of the total hours watched, followed by YouTube and SteamTV. Other platforms, such as Nimo TV, Facebook Gaming, and TikTok also appear in the list.
To see all complete data of the CS:GO audience in 2022, access the official report of Esports Charts.
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