20m watched 2014 International Dota 2 Championships

2 million peak concurrent online viewers

Valve has revealed that the International Dota 2 Championships were watched by over 20 million online viewers.

The event also doubled the numbers for last year's peak concurrent online viewers total, scoring "well over" two million people.

The eSports event was available online and through compatible devices at ESPN3 while Gabe Newell appeared on ESPN2 on Sunday.

"From the success of the Compendium to the collaboration with ESPN, this year's International really demonstrates how much competitive gaming has grown to rival traditional sports," said Valve's Erik Johnson before the event.

"We believe the teams have also pushed to a new level of play this year and will further demonstrate the incredible advances made across this tournament since it first began three short years ago."

The winning team from the tournament, Newbee, took home $5 million in prize money.

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Latest comments (3)

Alex Bunch Proof Reader, ZiCorp Studios6 years ago

Once the novelty has worn off it'll disappear.

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Steve Wetz Reviewer/Assistant Editor, Gamer's Glance6 years ago

That's crazy talk. This has only begun to arc upward. There's little to no market saturation at this point, so we know we haven't hit the ceiling yet. The general (non-gamer) public probably doesn't even know what DOTA stands for.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that the viewership is so high for MOBAs but not fighting games. Watching a fighting game and understanding who won and why is (on the surface, at least) somewhat simple. Understanding what happens in a MOBA is like playing a game of chess during a math test in which you accidentally walked into a more advanced class than you were actually taking, but were too embarrassed to admit your mistake. And that drew 20 mil. Plus got on ESPN.

I doubt that an eSports-dedicated cable channel is far behind, if it's not already being worked on.

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Morville O'Driscoll Blogger & Critic 6 years ago

The only thing that surprises me about this is that the viewership is so high for MOBAs but not fighting games.

Valve themselves are partially responsible for this - promotion through Steam alone was constant during the International, which means a minimum 6 million people knew it was going on. And those numbers are simply the average concurrent user numbers on Steam, not the actual numbers who saw the adverts. By contrast, who promotes the fighting tournaments? Hell, I struggle to even name a fighting tournament.

Related to promotion, getting more and more commentators and streamers on-board has helped lots, too. There was at least 1 decent "noob stream" running for The International, so even if you were clueless going in, it was possible to fijnd a stream that informed and entertained.

So, I suppose what I'm saying is, maybe the fighting tournament organisers could learn from the promotion and inclusion which have marked The International out. :)

I doubt that an eSports-dedicated cable channel is far behind, if it's not already being worked on.

Yup, I agree. :D

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 31st July 2014 4:29pm