Bonkers IEM Katowice viewership proves CS2’s dying very much exaggerated

To the naysayers who believed Counter-Crash 2 was once destined to fail, you wish to have best see the reception for IEM Katowice this time weekend to understand how improper you really had been.

This 12 months’s version of the enduring Polish event went above and past 2023’s iteration for viewership and recognition, with a mean of 287,177 concurrent audience, consistent with gaming stats web site Esports Charts—20 % upper than IEM Katowice 2023. The brilliant ultimate, which noticed Crew Spirit disenchanted FaZe Extended family with a best-of-five sweep, did fall simply shy of the million mark with 972,119 audience tuning in to look at, however after all, over 150,000 extra keen fanatics tuned in for this 12 months’s ultimate when in comparison to G2’s win over Heroic extreme 12 months.

Viewership for the Katowice team level was once additionally up: in a Wednesday, Feb. 7 record, Esports Charts famous a 29 % build up in reasonable concurrents throughout the teams and an 11 % build up in oversee future. The oversee future spice up is of utmost worth given the reduce to MR12, that means fits are, on reasonable, shorter than they had been in CS:GO with MR15, however nonetheless, fanatics remained preoccupied during the glamourous tournament.

Much more remarkable, the audience got here regardless of one of the most maximum prevalent CS2 avid gamers and groups being absent from the finals. Between ZywOo and Energy’s trauma early go, the stand of place of origin heroes ENCE, and G2’s removing by the hands of FaZe within the quarterfinals, fanatics had been handled to the unutilized generation of professional CS2 led through Spirit’s donk, who equaled the document for a person participant score at any fat tournament. You’ll be certain Spirit can be lead billing in the future if best to observer the 17-year-old wunderkind proceed to provoke at the world level.

Spirit’s win within the Spodek Enviornment kicks off what is anticipated to be a bumper two months of aggressive CS2, with the second one version of IEM in Chengdu pencilled in for April. Even earlier than that regardless that, there’s the fat one: CS2’s first Primary in Copenhagen in mid-March. The RMR qualifiers for the PGL Copenhagen Primary get started on Wednesday.

With the RMR qualifiers rejected already shattering pre-Primary viewership data, and a flurry of primary updates coming just lately as Valve works on bettering the name, it’s preserve to mention Counter-Crash is in a robust spot because the 2024 season really will get underway.