ESL One Los Angeles boasts most viewers for Dota 2 event since TI9

ESL One Los Angeles’ European and CIS Online league recorded the highest Twitch viewership of any Dota 2 event since The International 2019, peaking at 506,288 viewers.

The grand finals series between OG and Virtus.pro kept fans on their toes, ending with a 3-2 comeback victory for Virtus.pro. Despite the event taking place in an online setting and without any kind of official major status, the event out-performed a number of other tournaments with larger prize pools and more defined stakes.

With 506,288 peak viewers, ESL One Los Angeles online bested DreamLeague Season 13, which reached 475,236 viewers. It also out-performed the MDL Chengdu Major and its 353,798 peak viewers by a considerably larger margin.

Fans should take into account that these records were only taken from Twitch. Viewers from the Dota 2 client and other viewing platforms such as YouTube and Facebook were not included.

The viewership record of ESL One Los Angeles is impressive but it still lags behind the record of The International. The annual tournament is the biggest event of the year and its viewership reflects that, with The International 2019 recording more than 1.9 million peak viewers for the grand finals match between OG and Team Liquid.

ESL One Los Angeles’ success has obvious explanation

ESL One Los Angeles posting strong numbers is a surprise, but it’s easy to see why it was such a success.

The ongoing global situation resulted in the cancellation of numerous Dota 2 tournaments, with ESL One Los Angeles also being heavily impacted by this. The event was originally planned to be a live, official Dota 2 major but was instead turned into a series of regional, online leagues. The EU and CIS regional league is the largest western event to take place since the cancellations began.

Alongside this, many are currently at home which has resulted in a bump in all things related to gaming, and Dota 2 in particular. The game has posted stronger active player counts than it has in months as a result of stay-at-home orders.