The GeoGuessr World Cup 2024 was held from September 11 to 14 at the Stockholm City Hall in Sweden, marking its second edition since the game went esports proper. It ended as the title’s most successful event, reaffirming that the online geography-based game continues to be embraced by the competitive gaming and live-streaming worlds.
After three days of action across two stages, it was Blinky who emerged as the second-ever world champion. The Frenchman beat America's MK 3:2 in a closely-fought Grand Final — where the latter came back from 2:0 down to tie the scores before going down in the decider — to etch his name in history and become richer by $27,555.
Blinky has made the Grand Final at both the GeoGuessr World Cups held so far. At the first iteration last year, he lost the summit clash to Dutchman Consus 1:3, although his win here surely makes him a frontrunner for the tag of best GeoGuessr player ever.
GeoGuessr sees players' ability to judge the world virtually challenged as they have to guess locations based on Google Street View images. Like so many other non-immersive games, it gained popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown era as famous streamers played it regularly.
What worked was its ability to test players' geographic knowledge and observation skills. French content creators were especially into the game, with many rankings related to the game featuring names from this European powerhouse nation.
The presence of many top influencers among the game's player base also led to a lot of community events that ended up becoming surprisingly popular. This success is what prompted the game's custodians to try and take GeoGuessr to the next level by officially entering the esports scene in 2023 via the inaugural World Cup.
The 2024 world championship saw 24 of the game's best players battle it out for a prize pool of $50,000. Interestingly, the organizers released Player Bundles (containing a player jersey and country glasses) that allowed fans to show off which player(s) they were supporting.
All the revenue from these sales was added to the champion's purse, meaning the winner became richer by $5,000 compared to the 2023 edition. Moreover, any earnings made through Twitch subscriptions were added to the prize pool, ensuring a total of $7,555 was added to the final purse through community contributions.
The Grand Final was the most popular match of the GeoGuessr World Cup 2024, as the battle between North America and Europe for global supremacy attracted a large online crowd. It registered 298K Peak Viewers, a record for the game, with MK also part of the other match to cross the 200K PV threshold when he faced off against Orlando in the Playoffs Semifinals.
This GeoGuessr tournament also recorded 1.6M Hours Watched and 61.2K Average Viewers over 26 hours of airtime. Unsurprisingly, both were also game records, with the watch time figure being 156% more than the next-best entry, the EMEA Finals for this very world championship held earlier in April.
English and Portuguese emerged as the most watched languages at the event, taking up just over three-fourths of the cumulative watch time. The latter depended a lot on the journey of Orlando, who was the language's lone representative here, as he made it to the last four.
English influencers were a huge part of the competition's success, though, with the likes of xqc, lirik, pokimane, and willneff among those to cover it throughout. However, the World Cup still depends on the official channels to reach the largest audience, although the share of co-casters and overall channels increased in 2024.
Twitch continued to be the dominant platform for fans to catch the action, with YouTube being the other option. Perhaps the organizer will think about expanding the broadcasting rights to other live-streaming services like Kick from next year after seeing the kind of response the event received in 2024.
What also needs to be pointed out is that Rainbolt, arguably the game's biggest influencer, did not cover the event this year. Having been the top channel in 2023, the fact that this World Cup still hit record numbers is a testament to the game's rise and increase in popularity among fans and content creators.
With an often saturated video game industry seeing a spate of fresh releases or new expansions, players and creators have looked for a change, which has seen them veer towards unique offerings like Roblox, Chess, and GeoGuessr. The viewership stats have backed this trend, and judging by the response from fans and pundits, this will continue to be the case heading into the new year, which makes it an exciting time to be an esports fan.
