In the past year and a half CS:GO was going through its toughest time, with no LAN events due to the pandemic as well as the arrival of a new competitor in Valorant, that lead some of its player base to switch from CS.GO to the Riot Games title, Valve’s game was seen by many as being on the decline, with some going as further as saying that Valorant had already surpassed the game in popularity.
While Valorant viewership grew larger and larger with the passing of which event, with Masters Reykjavik having an average of 389 thousand viewers and peaking at 811 thousand, Master Berlin having an average of almost half a million, and with the peak spectator being one million as well as other tournaments that were also doing great in terms of viewership, CS.GO was seeing the opposite, compared to before the tournaments were doing much worse viewership wise, the peak views for the majority of tournaments was being around 200-300 thousand views, less than the average of the bigger Valorant tournaments, only ESL Pro League Season 14 and IEM Cologne 2021 were able to register good viewership but even those events were falling short compared to their main rival Valorant.
You can check the game’s viewership at EsportsCharts.
Some top-level pro players like nitro, ethan and Mixwell and also coaches left the CS:GO competitive scene to join Valorant as they saw the game as a new opportunity and something fresher.
The CS:GO community proved the game is far from dead
Despite all that was said above, the PGL Major Stockholm proved that CS:GO is far from dead, as a matter of fact, its liver than ever.
With the PGL Major Stockholm being the first event in two years realized on LAN with a crowd the excitement was through the roof, the tournament had the best CS:GO teams in the world what made it even more important, all eyes were in the biggest and probably most anticipated tournament in CS:GO history.
The community support was overwhelming even in the challenger stage and Legend Stage was the games were played on LAN but without a crowd, the number of viewers was amazing with the games having an average viewership of almost 400 thousand in that phase alone.
On twitter the PGL Major Stockholm was trending from the first day until the tournament last, this proved that CS:GO still had a lot of fans and that despite what some were saying about the community being dying slowly the fans proved otherwise, by watching the games, commenting their opinions on Twitter and overall showing they still care and love the game they considered to be the best FPS in the world.
The Major playoffs saw every viewership record being shattered
If there is something that is great about Esports, in general, are the crowds, playing in front of a sold-out crowd is amazing, it brings more emotion to the game and makes so that the game feels even more important, even from someone watching at home the difference of playing in Lan with a crowd and without a crowd is abysmal.
And there are no crowds better than the CS:GO crowds, as usual, the fans put up a show in every series of the playoffs, from chants of support for their team to do the Mexican wave, and the well-known posters the atmosphere in the arena was always amazing.
Something that was also incredible was the level of CS:GO, throughout the playoffs, we got to see the game played at the highest level, and maybe that’s why so many people tuned in at home to watch the Major, during the playoffs the Major shattered viewership records series after series always establishing a new record after a match had ended with all the matches in the playoffs having more than one million peak viewers.
The Grand Final was the culmination of what this tournament had already said to us a long time ago CS:GO is here to stay, in the finals G2 Esports faced against NAVI and the viewership as well as the games were spectacular, PGL Major Stockholm had a peak of 2.74 million viewers in the final becoming the most successful CS:GO event of all time and sits in the 7th place in the top ten most viewed Esports events in history according to eschats.com.
This event proved that not only CS:GO is sill alive it is doing better than ever, the community and fans, in general, proved the interest in this game is at an all-time high and that CS:GO will stick around for quite some time.
If you have never played CS:GO but reading this article made you interested in experimenting with the game and see why so many people fell in love with this competitive game, you can play the game for free on Steam.
You can also get in contact with a CS:GO team if you are an aspiring CS;GO player or just want to know more about how a CS:GO organization works by contacting NAVI.
All images right belong to HLTV, and EsportsCharts.
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