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Esports has been growing massively over the past few years, and it is expected to grow even more in the coming years. In 2021, amongst the top four games the first three were mobile games having a peak esports viewership of over 3 million viewers, were mobile games. Mobile gaming has made a massive impact on esports viewership in recent years.
Ranking of games in 2021 by Peak Esports Viewership
Peak viewers above 3 Million
According to Esports Charts, the top four games of 2021 attracted over 3 million peak viewers on their livestreams.
Free Fire tops the list with over 5.4 million peak viewers at the Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore.
League of Legends 2021 World Championship attracted over 4 million peak viewers in the Grand Finals.
Although being banned in India, PUBG Mobile Global Championship Season 0 attracted over 3.8 million peak viewers
The Mobile Legends: Bang Bang M3 World Championship got a massive peak viewership of over 3.1 million.
Peak viewers between 1 Million - 3 Million
Three Esports titles drew a peak viewership between 1 million and 3 million:
The CS:GO – PGL Major Stockholm 2021 attracted over 2.7 million peak viewers, making it the most watched CS:GO tournament in the game's history.
Dota 2 The International 10 reached a new viewership milestone of over 2.7 million peak viewers after taking a year off due to the pandemic.
Valorant Champions 2021 event also had the highest peak viewership of 1 million peak viewers of any tournament in the game, with 1 million peak viewers.
Peak viewers between 500k - 1 Million
In 2021, four games attracted a peak viewership of 500k to 1 million: Arena of Valor, Minecraft, Battlegrounds Mobile India, and Chess.
More than 913k peak viewers tuned in to see the Minecraft Championship #15, in which the finest Minecraft players raced through a speed obstacle course and competed in numerous tasks.
Arena of Valor International Championship 2021 drew approximately 880k peak viewers, owing to fan participation from Vietnam and Thailand, where mobile MOBA is quite popular.
The event marking the debut of BGMI in India, the BGMI Launch Party, saw a massive viewership of over 537k peak viewers.
Chess gained massive popularity during the CoronaVirus pandemic. The most popular Chess tournament in 2021 is the FIDE World Championship 2021, which attracted over 613k peak viewers on the stream.
Peak viewers between 250k - 500k
Call of Duty: Warzone, Rainbow Six Siege, FIFA, Fortnite, Rocket League, HALO, and Apex Legends tournaments drew between 250K and 500K views. This category also covers tournaments for Fall Guys and Among Us, which rose to the top due to Twitch Rivals tournaments between popular Twitch streamers.
Peak viewers up to 250K
Tournaments of Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros., and other fighting games drew up to 250K peak viewers. Knockout City show matches and Path of Exile tournaments, from Twitch Rival tournaments, drew similar peak viewership.
Free Fire has been a huge part of the esports industry since its launch. However, the game was banned in India earlier this year. As a result, the peak esports viewership of Free Fire, this year, might decrease significantly as India had one of the largest user bases for Free Fire.
