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Just like sports fans arguing if Rugby or American football is tougher, everybody in esports has a different opinion on which title is the best. This has led to fans making their own tier lists where they rank major esports — however one thing these usually have in common is bias. Whether subconscious or not, it is difficult to be objective when ranking anything, unless there are defined parameters.

So what would make an ideal tier list? Esports Insider looked at the statistics and put together some key criteria that might be considered in an ideal, more objectively-defined tier list. The four categories we based our tier lists on are current (2023) viewership, all-time viewership, prize pools, and longevity. Based on these four rankings we made one final tier list to determine what these statistics say are the most well-rounded esport scenes.

In these tier lists the following games will be ranked: League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Dota, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Rainbow Six Siege, VALORANT, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Free Fire, Rocket League, Call of Duty, EA Sports FC, Overwatch, Halo and Starcraft.

In the first category we ranked each esports title in terms of contemporary viewership. This determines how well the game did over the past year by looking at the peak viewership of its most popular event in 2023.

It is no surprise that League of Legends dominates this list as the World Championship broke the esports viewership record with an outstanding peak viewership of over 6m, which is 2m more than Mobile Legend: Bang Bang sitting in second place, and quadruple CS:GO’s peak which sits in third.

It is even more impressive when you take into account that all viewership data for this list is taken from Esports Charts, which does not track Chinese platforms due to the difficulty of obtaining accurate Chinese data. However, it is important to note that this category will be disproportionately weighted against scenes with larger Chinese viewerbases, such as League of Legends, Arena of Valor and others. There is no clear effective method to get around this issue at the moment.

Counter-Strike’s lack of appearance in the S-tier may be due to the fact that Valve has yet to run a Major tournament on CS2. Valve made the decision to only have one Major in 2023 so that the pro scene could adapt to its new game before the next Major, which will now take place in March 2024.

At the top of this list also sits Mobile Legends: Bang Bang which has seen a huge increase in growth over the last four years. In 2019 the peak viewership for the game sat just above 600,000, whereas this year the M4 World Championship had a peak viewership of over 4 million.

On the lower end of this tier list is Rainbow Six Siege. Ubisoft’s game sits in D after it struggled with viewership this year, as its second Major of 2023 became the least popular in the game’s history. It is even more surprising considering it ranks much higher in one of the other metrics listed below.

The second category is peak viewership, where we have combined the top ten events in this title’s history based on their peak viewership. This provides a more accurate depiction of which esports titles have consistently performed well across numerous key events over the years. 

The peak viewership list is somewhat similar to the previous category, however, the stark difference is Free Fire has jumped up from B to A. This follows a trend of games that have had their viewership peaks in recent years outperforming games with viewership peaks before the 2020s.

A key example of this is Fortnite which had a peak of 2.3m in 2019, but only ranks in the C tier on this list whereas VALORANT, with a peak of 1.5m in 2022, is ranked in B. 

Older games such as CS and League of Legends retain their ranks at the very top whilst another old game in Starcraft finds itself in F with less than a million peak viewership when you add the game’s 10 most popular events together.

The third category is sorted by prize pool. These statistics are sourced from Esports Charts which combines every prize pool from that title to get one overall figure. This results in esport titles that have had consistently large prize pools for many years finding their way to the top of the list. 

At the very top sits Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 which have had large prize pools in their premier events for many years. These prize pools lineup with their viewership numbers which are also very high, unlike Fortnite which has struggled comparatively in terms of viewership, but on this list they join the two esport giants in S tier. 

As mentioned earlier Rainbow Six Siege excels in this category compared to the title’s viewership numbers, as it sees itself in the B tier alongside Rocket League and another younger esport, VALORANT.

This category sees mobile games much further down the tier list than viewership. One reason for this might be that mobile esports has accessed a very different market than PC gaming. Without the need for an expensive computer there is a widened access for mobile esports as anyone with a smartphone can participate.

The other side of this coin is that the average revenue per customer for a mobile esports event is going to be much lower, and prize pools are in line with that. This alongside the fact that they do not have the longevity required to have amassed a big enough collection of large prize pools puts them much lower down, for example Mobile Legends: Bang Bang sits in D tier and Free Fire in C.

The one exception to this rule is Arena of Valor; despite not recording the peak viewership numbers of its mobile game counterparts, it outshines them in the prize pool department sitting comfortably in the A tier.

Interestingly, a game that has struggled in every other category, but done well here is Starcraft which sits in B tier.

The last category is longevity, which takes a look at how long the esports scene of each title has been active. For this section Esports Insider has taken the date of the first recorded notable esports tournament from each game and ranked them accordingly. It is worth noting that we have taken the earliest edition of the video game franchise; for example the list includes the first Counter-Strike tournament as opposed to the first CS2 tournament. 

Notably, some of the games that find themselves in the S tier here have struggled in every other category. For example, Starcraft 2 dates its history in esports back to 2003, yet presently finds itself in F tier for current viewership. In contrast, however, Counter-Strike is one of the oldest games on the list, being released in 2000, but has been able to remain relevant to this day — amassing a huge prize pool over its history and continuing to host wildly popular tournaments.

PUBG Mobile finds itself at the bottom of the D tier alongside Arena of Valor, but despite this they have both ranked in A tier for prize pool. So despite their short history they have seen incredible investment in their tournaments. The opposite of this is Halo which has enjoyed a long history in esports, but never quite amassed a large prize pool to match. 

Despite some of these games having such a young lifespan, many of them have excelled in the other categories provided such as VALORANT, Fortnite, and many of the Mobile games listed.

Esports Insider has calculated the average position of every esports title across the four tier lists to determine where they stand relative to each other. After the average position of each title across all tier lists was taken into account, here are the final standings.

Rather predictably, Counter-Strike and League of Legends come out on top with Dota close behind. The mobile games fill out the middle alongside newcomers Fortnite and VALORANT, whilst on the other end Halo’s one appearance in the S tier propels it out of the F tier. The two games sitting in the bottom tier are Overwatch and Rainbow Six Siege, despite the latter having one B tier appearance.

The Halo World Championship 2023 became the second most-watched Halo event in Halo Championship Series (HCS) history.

The season-ending tournament saw 16 teams compete for a share of its $1m (~£822,325) prize pool.

According to esports data platform Esports Charts, the event accumulated peak viewing figures of 159,787 and averaged viewership figures of 74,468 across its 28-hour air time.

Halo’s most popular event, based on peak viewership, remains the HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh tournament which took place in 2021. The tournament continues to top the charts with a total of 267,279 peak viewers and 4.2m hours watched.

This year’s event was won by North American esports organisation FaZe Clan, which secured $400,000 (~£328,810) after defeating OpTic Gaming in the Grand Final. This year, all of the HCS LAN events have taken place in the United States of America. In June 2023, the HCS ran an invitational event at DreamHack Dallas alongside Counter-Strike, Rocket League and Fortnite.

In comparison to the 2022 Halo World Championship, 2023 has shown encouraging signs of growth for Halo esports. Peak viewership increased by approximately 11.2% while its average viewers have risen by 33.5%.

Following the conclusion of the 2023 event, the HCS confirmed the Halo esports circuit will be returning in 2024. Details on the prize pool, partnered teams, and event locations have yet to be revealed.

The year-on-year growth of Halo is positive news for the partnered teams involved and fans of the arena shooter. With more eyes on the esports spectacle, it will be interesting to see if any other organisations qualify for its partner team programme.

Very few innovations in the esports world have motivated hardcore games to convert to esports viewers quite like in-game item rewards, colloquially referred to as ‘drops’. Almost all major competitions have them: in League of Legends, VALORANT, Counter Strike, Rainbow Six, Overwatch, Rocket League, even Halo. 

Drops work by rewarding players with in-game items either randomly or after a certain number of hours have been watched of a given esport, or specific tournament. Viewers who watch the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS), for example, can earn exclusive in-game items for their cars. It can be as simple as a cosmetic attachment for your gun or as fundamental as a beta pass to a new game: in short, drops bring more eyeballs to a desired broadcast.

As the practice has become more common, different publishers have introduced their own in-game item drop schemes to incentivise viewership.

One of the most notable examples of leveraging in-game drops to draw viewers was in 2020, when Riot Games was launching its then-brand new shooter, VALORANT. To get access to the game’s beta you had to watch certain broadcasts with your Riot Games account linked to your Twitch, a strategy now replicated by many publishers.

It worked like a lottery where any viewer could be the next lucky gamer to get access to the new tactical FPS that all the big names were playing at the time. Thanks to this strategy, and the hype campaign Riot is known for, in the months of April and May VALORANT became the most watched video game on Twitch, beating colossuses like Riot’s own League of Legends and Valve’s CS:GO.

Overwatch 2, meanwhile, also offers a ‘watch and earn’ scheme where players can get in-game sprays, character skins and other cosmetics from watching the Overwatch League. Blizzard’s Overwatch drop system offers a case study in the efficacy of audience retention when using in-game drops. Blizzard said in a recent press conference that 70% of Overwatch players care deeply about collecting the various in-game skins. 

When Blizzard put one of their new premium skins as a reward for watching six full hours of competitions, the viewership of that particular weekend of matches jumped by 25%, per data from viewership analytics platform Esports Charts. But for the following week of competitions, where there was no new cosmetic for watching, viewership dropped back down again — by almost 25%.

The same thing happened a few months later but with an Overwatch League-themed skin. The rise and subsequent fall were not as severe (only 8%) but it drew attention to the fact that drops can be a double-edged sword.

Another interesting case study comes from one of the esports with the most loyal fanbases: Halo. When Halo Infinite dropped its multiplayer as a separate free to play experience, the internet exploded and viewership records were broken when the first Halo Championship Series (HCS) Major debuted a few months later.

But in the following weeks, many of the new players — and viewers — lost interest, leaving only the older, dedicated, more loyal core fanbase of the historic shooter. Against this backdrop, developer 343 Industries tried to draw viewers back with in-game item rewards for fans during its 2021 season. However, the audience metrics of the tournament appear to have remained largely unchanged by the presence of drops.

Viewership remained right along its previous average of 55,000-60,000 viewers despite the free cosmetics that the broadcast promoted — an indication, perhaps, that the game’s more established core fanbase was willing to watch Halo esports regardless of drops.

In CS:GO, meanwhile, Valve had long used a drop system to reward viewers of ‘Majors’ — Valve-sponsored events that are the most prestigious in the CS:GO calendar. The drops came in the form of ‘souvenir packages’ that dropped randomly after watching a game, and gained hype and notoriety for their (very low) chance to contain extremely rare skins worth thousands of real-world dollars.

CS:GO Majors have always been the most watched esports events (nine of the top ten CS:GO events by peak viewers were Majors), though it’s impossible to delineate how much of that viewership was driven by drops rather than the prestige and scale of the tournament.

However, Valve has since essentially removed in-game drop rewards for watching majors, instead moving to a system where users buy a digital pass and must correctly guess tournament results in order to get prizes. Despite removing this supposed viewing incentive, the change has not appeared to affect viewership — in fact, CS:GO has seen sizable viewership growth of its Majors since the changes took place.

In-game drops can be a useful resource in understanding the audience of an esport and their motivations for playing and watching. And there’s evidence to suggest drops can boost viewership — at least while they remain active.

Case studies indicate that implementing in-game drops has to be a carefully planned move and be a part of a well-planned strategy in order to avoid fleeting gains. However, the effect is variable across titles, and also depends on a variety of other factors — it is one tool amongst many in publishers’ arsenals to boost esports viewership.

North American esports organisation Gamers First (G1) has revealed plans for a new multi-purpose headquarters facility, which will include studios, training facilities and an event space.

The new 25,500 square-foot facility is located in the East Congress district of Austin, Texas. The space will be used as a headquarters for G1’s esports operations, as well as other companies owned by G1 CEO and Co-Founder Kenny Vaccaro.

Co-founded by former NFL player Kenny Vaccaro, G1 is a North American esports organisation that fields competitive teams in Halo, Rocket League, and Trackmania. The organisation also has a large roster of content creators.

G1 is a part of Vaccaro Enterprises, a holding company that recently acquired Evolve PCs, a custom computer manufacturer from the United States. The company also bought Women’s Car Ball, a womens’ Rocket League esports league, in February 2023.

The space, which was previously a warehouse, will feature a modular layout, with spaces for each of its operating companies. According to a release, all spaces are designed to be modular and moveable, depending on the requirements for a specific activation or event.

For example, G1’s South By Southwest activations will use office spaces that will be moved outside of the building.

The price tag for the facility was not revealed, but a release stated it was a ‘multi-million dollar’ build-out. The HQ will house Evolve PCs, Women’s Car Ball, and various media entities, G1 said.

The investment in the new facility comes despite a report by Esports Insider on August 4th that G1 had not paid staff working on its Women’s Car Ball league, nor paid out prize pool money to teams in the league. G1 has since started started to pay teams and staff money they were owed.

Alongside the aforementioned purposes, the space will also include a large office space, player lounge, speakeasy, stage, podcast studio, team offices, and co-working spaces.

The new facility is expected to be finished before Q3 2024. It has alreay broken ground, G1 said.

In a release, Vaccaro Enterprises noted that its constituent companies “will continue to operate within the headquarters and will serve as event space for various activations and experiences.”

North American esports organisation Sentinels has announced the creation of a subscription-based fan engagement platform called Sen Society.

The platform will host content created by the organisation as well as include special merchandise drops, digital offers and in-person activations. SEN Society membership costs $5 (£4) per month.

Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo, one of the organisation’s VALORANT players, presented the new fan platform in a video shared on the Sen Society website. TenZ detailed that the fan club was conceived to provide more content to fans that might not be suitable for social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram. This includes bloopers and behind-the-scenes recordings.

There is also a chance to be in Sentinels content, fan graphic packs, opportunities to participate in Q&A sessions with players and staff, as well as other benefits.

Sentinels are widely known within the VALORANT esports ecosystem, with its roster winning 2021’s VCT Stage 2 Masters in Reykjavik, Iceland. Sentinels are a partner team for the VCT Americas in VALORANT. Apart from VALORANT, the organisation also fields teams in Halo and Apex Legends.

Prior to its rebranding in 2018, Sentinals competed in esports under Phoenix1.

The platform requires membership to access most features, including the shop. In the reveal video, TenZ did note that every member will have the opportunity to access exclusive merchandise items, with the first one being a set of pins for the first fans that become members on the platform. The organisation did not mention any future merchandise drops.

Every member will get a physical membership card that allows for merchandise discounts for in-person sales at events and access to meet and greets at certain events. More perks of the membership card will be announced soon.

The launch of SEN Society comes shortly after Sentinels secured a partnership with Influencer-owned North American custom PC company Starforge Systems.

Esports festival and tournament organiser DreamHack has unveiled its slate of esports events taking place at DreamHack Dallas in June.

DreamHack Dallas will feature CS:GO’s ESL Impact Dallas Finals and Intel Extreme Masters Dallas 2023 events, as well as a Halo Invitational and Rocket Clash, an all-women Rocket League tournament. The tournaments will take place between June 2nd and June 4th, 2023.

DreamHack Dallas is the latest event in the DreamHack gaming and esports ‘festival’ circuit. Set to take place in Dallas, Texas in June, the event will host a large-scale public LAN party, cosplay contests, arcade cabinet competitions and more. There will also be tournaments in fighting games, collegiate and women’s Rocket League, as well as a chance for visitors to try out Counter-Strike 2.

The IEM Dallas will see 16 top CS:GO teams compete for a total of $250,000 (~£200,000) and a chance to qualify for IEM Cologne 2023. In addition, a win will count towards the Intel Grand Slam race, which recently restarted following FaZe Clan’s victory.

For Halo fans, DreamHack will host one of two Halo Championship Series Global Invitationals, a tournament that will see 16 top teams from four regions compete for a $125,000 (~100,000) prize pool.

The eight best women’s CS:GO teams will also compete at the ESL Impact Dallas Finals, a $123,000 (~£99,000) tournament whose winner will be crowned the champion of ESL Impact Season 3.

Another large prize pool is reserved for Fortnite. The $250,000 (~£200,000) tournament is open to all interested ticket holders and will be similar to the DreamHack San Diego Fortnite tournament. The best-placed teams will get the chance to participate in the Gamers8 tournament in Saudi Arabia later this year.

DreamHack Dallas is a part of the 12-event series of DreamHack events around the world. The event will be preceded by DreamHack Japan and followed by DreamHack Summer in Jönköping, Sweden and DreamHack Valencia in Spain.