Landmark Paris Major becomes biggest French esports event with record 50,000 fans as BLAST.tv sees impressive growth with 27,000 peak viewership
50,000 fans attended last week’s historic last ever CS:GO Major in Paris with Sunday’s final posting a peak viewership of 1.5 million and a record 27,000 on BLAST.tv.
Team Vitality’s win on home soil over GamerLegion was the third most-watched CS match of all time and saw BLAST break a flurry of records including the highest attendance for an esports event in France along with becoming the first Counter-Strike event to be broadcast live on TikTok.
Last November, esports entertainment company BLAST launched BLAST.tv, a radical new way to watch and enjoy esports. The platform was the home of the Paris Major, where fans were able to get closer to the action than ever before. BLAST.tv enjoyed impressive growth during the event with a 50% increase in registrations, over 1 million site visitors and 5-10% of Twitch’s average audience viewership. Users on BLAST.tv were found to interact more, chat more and watch two times longer than on other platforms.
This month’s landmark BLAST.tv Major was watched in over a 100 territories and in 27 languages, which saw 24 of the world’s best teams descend onto Paris to compete for a $1.25 million prize pool and a chance at claiming the title of the world’s best Counter-Strike team.
Tom Greene, Chief Growth Officer for BLAST, said: “We are incredibly proud of what we have been able to achieve with the BLAST.tv Major. Paris proved to be the perfect place to say goodbye to the last CS:GO Major, with an unforgettable atmosphere created by the 50,000 fans that attended the event and the millions more tuning in from home.
“We have been focussing on improving this at home experience with BLAST.tv. Fans are choosing to spend their time on the platform and moving across to BLAST.tv because it provides a differentiated way to watch their favourite esports. And our partners - Valve, Unikrn, Alpine, Novo Nordisk - were all able to activate or engage with the TV audience in unique ways.
“We know the broader esports ecosystem is considering how to deepen audience engagement and the BLAST.tv Paris Major has shown the enormous audience and commercial benefits in doing so. We are excited by the prospect of applying this unique formula to multiple games and esports ecosystems in the future.”
BLAST.tv’s live experience is tailored made for the competitive esports audience, with no pre-roll adverts and live stats. Where fans never miss a key moment of the action with an interactive timeline feature, which catalogues standout highlights to be replayed instantly on the playback timeline. The platform has a custom built video player with 4K capabilities and a moderated live chat feature that will enable fans to connect with a like-minded community, where fans will be able to impact the events unfolding before their eyes through interactive polls.
Tags:
