The Esports World Cup 2025: Closing Ceremony, held on August 24, signaled the end of the nearly two-month-long festival. The final week witnessed events in Counter-Strike, Street Fighter 6, and CrossFire, generating enough interest for the glittering finale to surpass the 2024 iteration by peak concurrent viewers.
The Closing Ceremony itself was a success, attracting more live viewers than the 2024 edition. While many top influencers who livestreamed last year's event were absent this time, it still found enough traction, especially among Arabic audiences, to get ahead.
The Qiddiya Esports Arena played host to one of the most prestigious nights in the sports calendar this year, including rewarding teams in the Club Championship rankings. The star-studded affair saw EWC global ambassador and Portugal superstar Cristiano Ronaldo join the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, on stage to celebrate with the esports organizations.
The Esports World Cup 2025: Closing Ceremony witnessed one of the most coveted moments of the entire summer of festivities. Team Falcons was once again declared the winner of the Club Championship, having racked up 5,200 points to take home a cool $7 million out of the total $20M kept aside for this trophy.
Team Liquid also did a repeat from the Esports World Cup 2024, finishing second to pocket a considerable $4 million. Interestingly, the Dutch esports organization had three championship wins to Team Falcons' one, but the latter was much more consistent across the 25 events.
Twisted Minds and AG.AL International also had more trophies than Team Falcons, but they only finished joint-fourth and sixth, respectively. Twisted Minds became richer by $2.25 million, while the Chinese esports organization received $1.5 million as Club Championship winnings.
The Esports World Cup 2025: Closing Ceremony attracted 247,805 Peak Viewers (PV), which was 6.7% more than last year. The event’s most popular broadcast was on the official Arabic YouTube channel, peaking at 34,803 concurrent viewers.
One trend observed was that this year's event was a lot more consistently watched than in 2024, which only attracted high viewership toward the end. As a result, the 2025 iteration almost doubled in average viewership, posting 189,654 Average Viewers (AV) across its near two-hour runtime.
Among individual streamers, Arabic creator Saleh "thewitty21" Alqahtani was the top name with 23,882 PV, reflecting the higher participation of Arabic audiences this year. He was joined by another Kick streamer, Abdulaziz "owbrain" Almehmadi, on the podium, as the Saudi Arabian Overwatch caster and former pro reached 18,920 live viewers.
Rani "stableronaldo" Netz, one of the more popular North American Twitch streamers who is part of FaZe Clan, was the second-most popular influencer, hitting 23,789 PV. His interest in the Closing Ceremony was despite FaZe Clan not getting on the Club Championship leaderboard, as it could not claim a single point from the seven titles it participated in.
All in all, the Esports World Cup 2025 wrapped up after another successful run, creating more history and reinforcing Saudi Arabia's growing influence in the industry. It also ended the summer on a high, with teams now set to reset ahead of a busy second half that involves the fight for world championship glory across titles.
