Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships back live after two-year break
Following a two-year absence from public events, Counter-Strike, one of the most recognized and popular video games in the competition, returns with a live audience in Stockholm.
“It’s amazing for us, it’s crazy how long we stayed so far from events,” said Jaime Padua, a 34-year-old Brazil supporter.
The sentiment is shared by the players as well. “Everyone is happy to go back on stage, everyone is looking forward to playing,” Mathieu Herbaut, also known as ZywOo, told the AFP.
The last PGL Major was held in Berlin back in September 2019, and the competitions have been launched online since then.
Herbauen, who plays for Vitality and has been consistently voted the world’s premier player over the last two years.
He is known as “The Chosen One” since he was born on the same day that the first Counter-Strike game was officially released.
“These events need the audience,” said esports and social researcher Nicolas Besombes to the AFP.
“It’s like sports, it’s above all a spectacle. Even if esports is the fruit of the digital revolution, and as such, can take place online, it is still the case that in person we find the social passions tied to traditional sports,” added Besombes.
According to him, esports is all about “to be able to live vicariously through the emotions that the players and athletes experience on stage.”
World-breaking number of audience
According to Esports Charts, The PGL Major Stockholm 2021 is officially the highest-watched CS:GO tournament ever, breaking a record of 1,371,918 concurrent viewers on November 5, 2021.
The viewership jump was observed during the quarter-final match between NAVI and Team Vitality, as the two current best CS:GO players in the world: Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut were up against each other.
The tournament, which was broadcasted in multiple languages, saw the Russian stream register a peak of 532,000 steady audiences. On the other hand, the English stream noted a maximum of 511,000 concurrent viewers.
Equipped with this data, PGL Major Stockholm 2021 has finally broken the four-year-old record set by ELEAGUE Major Atlanta back in 2017, where a total of 1,331,781 viewers had been registered during the grand finals between Virtus.pro (VP) and Astralis.
The “Worlds 2021” competition in League of Legends is currently taking place in Iceland but with limited attendance, just like “The International”, the flagship competition for Dota 2 in October.
The playoffs will take place inside Avicii Arena, from November 4 to November 7. The qualified teams will fight for a massive $2 million prize pool, the biggest in the CS:GO history.
Sigma Esports Technologies Cup
Esports Technologies, a Platinum Sponsor at SiGMA Europe, will present a live Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, the Sigma Esports Technologies Cup, where a total of eight teams will compete over the three days of the SiGMA exhibition, which will take place at the Malta Fairs & Conventions Centre on November 16 to 18. Winners will bring home a trophy and prizes from a pool of $15,000.
Among those eight teams are Denmark’s Astralis Talent, Portugal’s SAW Youngsters, and Eversio from Malta.
