Esports Awards 2021 ended last weekend in Arlington, Texas — it’s one of the most prestigious awards in the esports and gaming industry. This year's event was broadcast not only by the organisers, but also by Twitch streamers, helping it gather a record number of viewers. Streams Charts sums up the event’s results and breaks down its viewership statistics.
Esports Awards 2021 viewership statistics
The Esports Awards regularly draws tens of thousands of viewers, but its audience increased a lot in 2021 — mainly because the event was covered by the most popular Twitch streamers.
The event was live for five hours and during that time it collected more than 1 million Hours Watched — eight times more than the 2020 event had. The Average Viewers number of the ceremony exceeded 218K spectators — 14.5 times more (!) than the audience of the previous event.
Peak Viewers of the event increased similarly — up to 312K people watched it concurrently. For comparison, that's more than the PC Gaming Show attracted during E3 2021.
The explosive growth of the Esports Awards statistics was possible by the event's community streamers. Among the content makers covering the awards were Canadian creator Felix xQc Lengyel, a Brazilian streamer Gabriel gabepeixe Baptista from LOUD and a Spanish streamer Ibai Ibai Llanos.
XQc and gabepeixe attracted the most Peak Viewers — 101,7K and 101,3K people respectively were watching the Esports Awards 2021 broadcasts on their channels. Ibai also attracted a very high number of Peak Viewers — up to 87K spectators followed the Awards on his channel.
Regarding the total Hours Watched of the event, gabepeixe and Ibai were also in the lead with 360K and 305K Hours Watched, respectively. Both of them accounted for over 64% of the total HW.
Esports Awards 2021 results
The organisers presented awards in dozens of categories. For example, two members of the Natus Vincere CS:GO team, s1mple and B1t, won the PC Player of the Year and PC Rookie of the Year awards, respectively. Valorant was declared the esports game of the year, the award for mobile game of the year went to Free Fire, and 100 Thieves was chosen as the esports organization of the year.
Ibai was awarded the Streamer of the Year for the second year in a row. The Spaniard left G2 Esports in 2021 and began to develop his own personal brand and has been particularly successful in it. One of the reasons is him being close to popular football players around the world; he was even honoured to attend Lionel Messi's farewell dinner on the occasion of him leaving FC Barcelona for PSG.
Spanish Forbes voted Ibai one of the most powerful men in Spain in 2021. Earlier this year, Llanos launched a show on Twitch called Charlando tranquilamente, which regularly features some of most famous Spanish-speaking influencers, including global football stars Ronaldinho, Paulo Dybala, Sergio Ramos and others.
Ibai is currently in Twitch's top four channels of 2021 by total Hours Watched, having accumulated 92.4 million Hours Watched in less than eleven months. He's also had the second highest Peak Viewers number of the year, with over 1.5 million PV during the boxing tournament among streamers in late May.
Ibai is one of Twitch's most successful streamers in 2021
Also noteworthy is a Brazilian streamer and esports athlete NOBRU, who won the Esports Personality of the year award. NOBRU is one of the main promoters of the mobile game Free Fire in Brazil. By the age of 20, he had formed his own team, held several major tournaments on his own and won numerous personal awards.
Largely thanks to NOBRU, Free Fire tournaments attract hundreds of thousands of spectators in Brazil. NOBRU's Team Fluxo competed in the Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore in May and took fourth place there — largely due to NOBRU, the tournament attracted over a million spectators from Brazil at its peak, and the championship itself is currently ranked number one in esports by Peak Viewers (not including statistics from the Chinese streaming platforms).
NOBRU is also regularly ranked in the top 10 of Twitch's most popular Portuguese-language streamers. For example, he ranked seventh at the end of the third quarter of 2021.
Also read: Top Portuguese-speaking streamers in Q3 2021
All winners of the Esports Awards 2021:
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Esports Organization of the Year (100 Thieves).
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Streamer of the Year (Ibai).
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Esports Team of the Year (Atlanta FaZe).
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Esports PC Player of the Year (s1mple).
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Esports Controller Player of the Year (Simp).
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Esports Personality of the Year (NOBRU).
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Esports Play by Play Caster of the Year (Miles Ross).
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Esports PC Rookie of the Year (B1t).
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Esports Controller Rookie of the Year (M0nkey M00n).
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Esports Coach of the Year (Moon).
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Esports Mobile Player of the Year (Paraboy).
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Esports Host of the Year (sjokz).
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Esports Journalist of the Year (Kevin Hitt).
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Esports Collegiate Ambassador of the Year (Dr. Chris 'Doc' Haskell).
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Esports Play of the Year (Virtue).
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Esports Game of the Year (Valorant).
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Esports Video Production Team of the Year (G2 Esports).
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Esports Creative of the Year (Thorsten Denk).
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Esports Publisher of the Year (Riot Games).
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Esports Supporting Service of the Year (Discord).
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Esports Mobile Game of the Year (Free Fire).
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Esports Content Creator of the Year (Ashley Kang).
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Esports Content Series of the Year (Metagame).
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Esports Color Caster of the Year (SPUNJ).
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Esports Analyst of the Year (Caedral).
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Esports Hardware Provider of the Year (Corsair).
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Esports Creative Piece of the Year (No Clue / adidas x G2 Esports).
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Esports Apparel of the Year (100 Thieves).
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Esports Photo of the Year (Eric Ananmalay).
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Esports Cosplay of the Year (Peyton Cosplay).
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Panel’s Choice Award (Fizzi).
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Esports Creative Team of the Year (Alex Productions w/ DrDisRespect).
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Esports Collegiate Program of the Year (Maryville University).
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Esports Coverage Platform of the Year (The Esports Observer).
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Esports Broadcast/Production Team of the Year (Riot Games).
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Esports Commercial Partner of the Year (Intel).
To celebrate the main sale of the year, we have prepared special offers for Streams Charts monthly subscriptions. Get access to advanced streaming analytics with discounts ranging from 30% to 50%. The promotion will run until November 29. Discounts apply to standard PRO and Streamer plans. To activate them, go to streamscharts.com/pricing, where discount prices are already displayed. In addition, we have a unique offer for the annual Esports Charts subscription, read more here.
