- TI9 and TI10 had a lot more hours watched compared to this year’s TI11
- Several factors could be causing the lower number of viewers
- Despite that, Dota 2’s popularity still remains high
This year’s The International viewership statistics mark the first-ever drop in interest since the event’s first iteration 11 years ago.
TI11 Doesn’t Perform as Expected
This year’s The International 11 has ended with the astonishing victory of Tundra Esports over Team Secret, and as the players and fans are celebrating, it’s time to look at some official statistics. Although the finals were a spectacle within a spectacle, this year’s TI event seems to lack quitter a bit behind previous years when it comes to views and viewership retention.
According to Esports Charts, The International 11 accumulated a total of 67 692 105 hours watched across the board and peaked at 1 748 392 concurrent viewers. Although these numbers seem large on paper, it’s useful to put them into perspective.
If we look at these statistics from a more pessimistic way, we would immediately note that The International 11 has hit a three-year record low. The difference is best illustrated when looking at last year’s event, TI10. With more than 107 239 277 hours watched, peaking at 2 741 514 concurrent viewers, The International 10 is the most-watched iteration of the event in Dota 2 history.
With almost two million concurrent viewers and a total of 88 202 849 hours watched, The International 9 also performed far better than this year’s tournament. The difference between it and TI10 is rather small, but then we have this year’s event being a big outlier.
Why Did TI11 Perform Badly?
Being the biggest esports event not just in Dota 2, but as a whole, The International has always pulled in massive amounts of viewers. Knowing a lot of people would be hyped for the event, Valve puts out a special Dota 2 battle pass and uses the profits from that to finance the majority of the prize pool.
However, this year’s prize pool was also the lowest one in years. The gathering of the Dota 2 prize pool lagged behind other such events and it’s speculated that players simply did not like what the battle pass had to offer. Furthermore, Valve was late with the release of things players had actually been asking for a long time. But by the time Valve released them, the hype had already died down.
Another reason why this year’s The International had less interest than previous years, is the fact that Valve skipped TI’s opening ceremony. It had become a traditional part of every TI when Gabe Newell comes out to congratulate the whole community at the start of every TI. Although the ceremony and Newell’s speech eventually took place later in the tournament, perhaps it was a bit too late to ride the wave of initial hype.
But despite not passing the ninth and tenth iterations of the event, TI11 is still the third most-watched such event in Dota 2 history. And with the game’s player base surpassing one million for the first time since 2019, one could say Dota 2 is still in quite a good place with a lot of room to grow.
