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.
