The esports scene, especially with titans such as League of Legends, CS:GO, and Dota 2 in the mix, continues to grow from strength to strength. In 2021, viewership soared to new heights, which only begs the question of what comes next.

 

Before looking forward though, here's a quick review of some of the highlights of the 2021 gaming scene.

 

Stats and Figures

 

Starting things off with some numbers is a pretty good idea, especially considering how staggering many of them are. The total prize pool for esports in 2021 was $217,633,443.67. Obviously, this wasn't split evenly across all tournaments, but it yields a mean tournament pool of $49,316.44 across 166 titles.

 

There was a total of 4,413 tournaments which saw 23,086 players throw their names into the hat for bragging rights and prize money. The top five shares of the prize pool went to Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS Mobile, Arena of Valor, and PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS. With a rise in importance of rank and skill many people choose boosting services to improve their skill and get to play better opponents.
Just in case you're wondering, League of Legends came in at 7th position in terms of prices.

 

CS:GO had the most tournaments with 494 in total. In fact, none of the other top seven prize pool sharers had over 100 tournaments, with the number three and four ranks seeing 27 and 18 tournaments, respectively. Of the prize pool, the mean earnings per player was $9,427.07 with a median of $916.79. If you wish to become a professional player one day, we highly recommend starting off by getting yourself a personal coach for Counterstrike, who will help you improve step by step until the student surpasses his master.

 

Greatest Viewership

 

Apart from the finances, a big part of tournament popularity comes from the viewership it gets. So, it’s time to look at some of the most viewed tournaments of the year.

 

The highest concurrent viewership came from the Free Fire World Series in Singapore, garnering a peak of 5.41 million viewers, with an average viewership of 2.08 million. It was short too, only having a one-hour airtime period

 

League of Legends and its world championship unsurprisingly also finds itself in the mix with a peak viewership of 4.01 million. The title is widely thought of as the biggest esports game in the business, and with the distinction of holding the record for the most hours watched by an esports tournament in history at 174.82 million, it’s hard to dispute that fact. With so many players to compete with getting an edge over others seems like an impossible task. Thus the top players usually choose to ask for the assistance of trainers to get better at League.

 

PUBG Mobile’s Global Championship also pulled in an incredible number, standing at 3.80 million viewers at its peak. This is quite impressive, considering that the mobile championship started only in 2020.

 

With so many new players coming in websites accommodating the trading of in-game items, accounts and service has also become increasingly more popular.

Other top contenders include the M3 World Championship, M2 World Championship, PGL Major, and The International 10.

 

Evo Cancellation

 

This one was one of the biggest news pieces of 2021. The FGC looks forward to showing off its skills at the biggest its biggest tournament of the year, the Evolution Championship Series, or Evo. In 2021, due to the state that their pandemic caused, the decision was taken to cancel Evo altogether.

 

There were talks of having the competition online, but this unfortunately never materialized.

 

Final Remarks

 

2021 was certainly a great year for the esports world, and there are lots of even greater things in its future. There were even titles such as Def Jam: Fight for NY and Shrek SuperSlam featuring a tournament each, which was quite unexpected. With 166 games contested in total, there were certainly some surprising entries.