If you needed more evidence of Counter-Strike’s rocket-like growth over the past year, here it is: the FACEIT finals in London earlier this month had 25.2 million unique viewers. That’s a whopping 267 percent increase over the previous FACEIT season which culminated in October 2014, where Fnatic defeated iBUYPOWER to take the title in Milan, Italy.
The finals featured some of the best teams on the planet, with five travelling in from Europe, two from North America, and even a competitor from Australia.
Team SoloMid, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Fnatic, Virtus Pro, Na’Vi, Team Liquid, Elevate, and Team battled it out in London earlier this month to conclude what was the biggest FACEIT tournament to date, according to new stats from the organization.
FACEIT
The grand finals didn’t have quite the same impressive viewership as the event as a whole, tallying 6.77 million unique viewers. But growth from the previous year is what really matters here, and that mirrored what happened elsewhere, increasing 227 percent. Not surprisingly, the total number of views jumped too, with 208 percent increase that brought the final total to 52.5 million, with the finals itself topping out at 17 million viewers tuning in to see Team SoloMid take down Ninjas In Pyjamas for their second major tournament victory.
At its peak, the broadcast had 300,000 concurrent viewers tuning in to catch Team SoloMid take the grand final over Ninjas in Pyjamas. It was a deserved win too, just based on the stats. Three SoloMid players claimed the most kills in the tournament. Finn “Karrigan” Andersen, Nicolai “device” Reedtz, and Peter “Dupreeh” Rasmussen tallied 792 frags between them out a total of 5,482 at the LAN finals.
FACEIT’s biggest tournament yet owes a lot of thanks to Counter-Strike‘s own growth as an esport. But it likely also benefited from the addition of two more teams, a representative from the Oceanic region, and broadcasts in 14 languages.
It’s a positive start to 2015 for FACEIT, and the question now is just how high these numbers can get. The growth shown at this event is following suit of others in the Counter-Strike scene. FACEIT hasn’t released information for its next tournament yet. But it will surely look to keep building on these positive numbers.
Image via FACEIT/Facebook
