Team Vitality Triumphs at IEM Rio 2023 with 562K Viewers
The highly anticipated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) competition, Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Rio 2023, concluded with Team Vitality, a French organisation, emerging as the victor over the financially troubled Heroic in the final. According to Esports Charts, the tournament garnered an impressive peak viewership of 562,249, with an average concurrent viewership of 249,498.
The semi-final matchup between Heroic and NAVI reached the highest peak viewership during the event. In comparison to other CS:GO tournaments this year, IEM Rio secured the second-highest peak viewership, following IEM Katowice with 726,820 viewers.
IEM Rio 2023 boasted a total airtime of 57 hours and 55 minutes, with a total of 14.45 million hours watched. Heroic garnered the most hours watched by any team at the competition, with 5.4 million hours. Meanwhile, Vitality, led by the renowned player Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and the MVP of IEM Rio, participated in three of the five matches with the highest peak viewership, facing off against Heroic, Cloud9, and BIG.
The Brazilian crowd was disappointed when the last remaining Brazilian team, FURIA, was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Heroic. However, Vitality’s victory over Heroic in IEM Rio further solidified their success following their ESL Pro League win in October of the previous year.
Heroic, despite their outstanding performances in CS:GO in recent years, recently informed shareholders that additional funding of NOK 80 million through 2025 is necessary to sustain operations, with NOK 10 million needed before the summer of 2023. Last month, the organisation secured an investment of $1 million.
There has been discussion within the Counter-Strike community about competition fatigue, with FaZe Clan player Russel “Twistzz” van Dulken expressing exhaustion on Twitter.
Looking ahead, the BLAST.tv Paris Major is scheduled for next month and is expected to surpass IEM Rio and IEM Katowice in terms of viewership. IEM Dallas is also slated to take place from May 29th to June 4th.
