Counter-Strike Major Sets New Viewership and Prize Money Records
The latest Counter-Strike major event has broken records in terms of viewership and prize money distributed to competing teams.
More than 27 million unique viewers watched the ESL One Cologne tournament, as announced by ESL. Valve also revealed that the participating players and teams received over $4.2 million in prizes and a share of sticker sales.
Huge Viewership Numbers
The massive viewership numbers for ESL Cologne are not surprising. However, the latest data from ESL shows that these 27 million viewers consumed almost 34 million hours of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive over the four-day event. The peak concurrent viewership reached 1.3 million.
ESL also highlighted their newly implemented drug testing program, which resulted in only negative results in Cologne.
Valve’s announcement of delivering $4.2 million to the involved organizations is nearly three times the previous record set at ESL Katowice. Only $250,000 comes from the tournament’s prize pool, with the majority of the amount coming from sticker sales.
Valve sells in-game stickers that players use to decorate their weapons in Counter-Strike. These stickers include team logos and player signatures, creating a crowd-funded revenue source unique to esports.
Comparing with Dota 2
Despite the significant amount of money involved, it is still far from the over $18 million awarded at this year’s edition of The International, Valve’s annual Dota 2 event. However, Cologne’s success shows that with continued growth, a tournament system featuring multiple majors in Counter-Strike has the potential to generate similar revenue.
Imbalance in Revenue Distribution
The sticker system provides revenue for teams and players, but it may create an imbalance between more and less popular teams and players. Stickers for Cloud9 and Ninjas in Pyjamas may sell much better compared to lesser-known squads like Ebettle and Immunity. Whether this is fair or not is a separate debate. Nevertheless, Valve’s in-game item sales have brought significant financial benefits to esports.
The large number of fans watching these events is certainly not complaining.
Photo by Patrick Strack via ESL/Flickr