The esports industry continues to grow in scope, reaching new audiences and adopting novel strategies to entertain fans. 2024 was a massive year for esports culture, with a number of events on a global scale. Now that the year is coming to a close, it’s worth taking a look at some of the strategies that led to esports success in 2024, as these will most likely be evolving trends in 2025.
The data presented here is just a small taste of our look back at the past year on live-streaming platforms: Save Point 2024. To find out more about trends in other live-streaming areas like top streamers, hit games, and Twitch-integrated success stories, check out the full Save Point 2024 recap for free now:
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The Esports World Cup Showcases The Power of Multi-game Tournaments
The crowning jewel of esports events in 2024 was the Esports World Cup, a bid by Saudi Arabia to become the centre of global esports events with a massive 22 tournaments over six weeks. This effort obviously paid off, with Saudi Arabia announced to be hosting the inaugural Olympic Esports Games in 2025. Back on the Esports World Cup, the event generated 103M hours watched across its entire span with a peak viewership of 2.8M. The combination of high production value spectacle, fan-favorite teams and a wide array of games clearly brought in hype for the event.
The most interesting aspect of the event to us is the use of multiple games in one centralized event. Apart from practical advantages like combining logistics and schedules, using multiple games is a great way to collaborate and cross-pollinate different audiences. Oddly, this is relatively rare in the esports scene, perhaps due to the difficulty of coordinating publishers across many different games. Most existing examples come from the Fighting game genre, one of the earliest genres to get the esports treatment. EVO and EVO Japan are events featuring games from massive franchises like Tekken and Street Fighter all in one packed weekend. Alternatively, games made by the same publisher are also featured in single events such as the Pokémon World Championships and Supercell’s SuperFest. No doubt we’ll see more games joining forces to attract a crowd in the coming year.
Mobile Esports Reach the Largest Possible Audience
Another key ingredient in the Esports World Cup’s success was the overwhelming popularity of mobile game esports. In fact, mobile esports accounted for 44% of the Esports World Cup’s total viewership even though only 4 of the 22 tournaments were mobile! In fairness, this was largely thanks to Mobile Legends: Bang Bang which singlehandedly brought in 2.3M hours watched.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, however. Mobile esports watch time jumped by a massive 41% from 2023 to 2024, showing how rapidly the space is expanding. Keep in mind that’s just esports viewership, not casual mobile game streaming. Again, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is the big winner with 340M hours watched in 2024 (up 17M hours watched from last year). Wholly mobile esports tournaments are also becoming feasible, like the aforementioned Supercell SuperFest which thrived off the popularity of Brawl Stars esports.
So why is mobile viewership growing so much? The short answer seems to be accessibility. While AAA games like Overwatch or Call of Duty require high-end PCs and quality peripherals to reach a competitive level (or even run, in some cases), mobile games remove this barrier by using hardware that more people around the world have consistent access to. No doubt this has helped the proliferation of mobile game interest, and consequently mobile esports interest. This partners well with the growing popularity of live streaming: Another activity which circumvents the needs for fancy tech for viewers who don’t have access to expensive games.
Co-streaming Combines Big Events with Influencer Star Power
While it’s easy to be enchanted by the pageantry of big esports events, most fans are tuning in for one thing: Their favourite streaming personalities. Esports events provide content for streamers to engage with, whether that be as competitors themselves, commentators providing expert analysis, or even as fellow fans alongside their audience barracking for a certain team to take home the trophy.
As a result, it’s no wonder that many fans choose to watch their favourite streamer’s coverage of said events, known as co-streaming, rather than watching the official streaming channel. In 2024, co-streaming accounted for 44% of all esports viewership – that’s 1.2B hours watched! Some of the most popular co-streamers included Ibai, Gaules, and Caedrel who brought in 77M, 52M, and 47M hours watched of esports co-streaming viewership in 2024, respectively.
Event organizers have realised how crucial it is to attach well-known personalities to their events if they want to attract viewers. Back in February, Ubisoft paid Jynxzi to co-stream the R6 Invitational (Rainbow Six Siege), and his viewership alone amounted to 1.1M hours watched. Other events put the star personality front and centre, relying almost wholly on their name to bring in viewers. One of the strongest examples from this past year would be the Twitch Rivals: Hunt & Run w/ IlloJuan, which had 98.4% of its entire viewership come from co-streaming.
Creator-led Events Tap Into Pre-existing Fanbases
The thing is, it’s not just esports event organizers that have realized the power of big streamers in drawing an audience. Creators themselves have clocked this as well, leading to a proliferation of creator-led events for which the main attraction is the headlining streaming star themselves.
The most famous example of these types of events are creator brawls: Events in which streamers get in the ring and let their fists do the talking. The most popular event globally of this kind is Ibai’s annual La Velada del Año event, the fourth edition of which brought in a peak viewership of 3.8M – that’s 1M higher than the Esports World cup! A series of successful copycat events have popped up from the U.S. to Latin America, such as WestCOL’s Stream Fighters event which had a peak viewership of 1.4M for its third edition this year.
Of course, these creator-led events also tie back into the world of competitive gaming, making them potential rivals to major esports tournaments. Take, for example, Junichi Kato’s Hyper Game Tournament which brought together some of the biggest Japanese streamers and Fighting game players for a combined watch time of 3.8M hours watched. Rubius also joined the fun here, with the All Stars Rubius Cup for Fortnite hitting a peak viewership of 385K. It feels like only a matter of time before there are fully competitive esports-style tournaments which are headlined by streaming personalities.
Heading into 2025 we expect these trends to only grow stronger. Relying on streaming personalities to draw in new fans has been integral to modern marketing for several years now, and esports tournaments will likely be no different. While the mobile esports scene seems more streamer-agnostic at the moment, that may change if a breakout star with an engaging personality breaks out and becomes an idol for aspiring mobile esports players. Stream Hatchet will be watching as exciting developments unfold in 2025.
If you’d like to scroll through some of the biggest trends in live streaming of the past year over your holiday break, like new live-streaming platforms and non-gaming topics, check out Save Point 2024 for free now:
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