After the dominance that League of Legends showed in early 2024 viewership stats thanks to the various regional leagues underway across the world, many other disciplines got their esports seasons going over the next few weeks. Despite the MOBA continuing to set the standard for live broadcasting, a few other renowned games saw significant boosts thanks to industry-leading community casters, stamping their presence over the year's first quarter.
One content creator, in particular, reiterated his importance to Counter-Strike by attracting millions of viewers to its events. He topped the overall watch time standing and continues to be the epitome of a highly-followed community caster benefitting the game and community with his quality content.
With Q1 in 2024 done and dusted, Streams Charts has collated a list of the top-performing esports channels from all the live streaming platforms it tracks between January and March. Not much changed in terms of the diversity of disciplines involved, but there was some movement up and down the ladder, with a familiar name from the mobile gaming genre finding its way back into the fold.
Most watched esports channels in Q1 2024
Atop this list is Gaules, who overcame a slight hiccup at the start of the year to once again be the streamer of choice for CS2 fans wanting to catch the live active online. He faced uncertainty about gaining official broadcasting rights for the new game's first-ever Major, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, but he ended up covering it and becoming the competition's most popular channel overall.
The support he received after initially announcing that he would not be live-streaming the competition paid off as he was allowed to finally do so. It also saw his broadcasts emerge 12 times more popular than the channels of BTS Brasil, which officially covered the major tournament in Brazil. In fact, Gaules' Q1 watch time was almost double that of the next-best entry and marked a 71% rise from his figures in the last quarter of 2023.
Next comes the official channel of the LCK on YouTube Gaming which recorded 18.35M Hours Watched in the first quarter. This was thanks to the LCK Spring 2024, which enjoyed a monumental Spring split that saw it break several records, including becoming the most-watched League of Legends tournament of all time outside the World Championship. Lastly, thanks to another Grand Final encounter between now-classic rivals T1 and Gen.G, it finished with the highest Korean-language peak viewership in esports outside the Worlds.
There are two other official channels League of Legends that make this table, and both are from Korea. Its English Twitch and Korean YouTube Gaming handles nabbed the seventh and ninth spots, reiterating just how successful a Spring split it had.
Rounding off the podium is an event in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang's most successful region, the MPL Indonesia. It is witnessing its 13th season unfold, which has helped its official YouTube channel finish third here. The event kicked off in typically solid fashion, with one game in the fourth week of the Group Stage making it the second-most popular esports event of 2024 so far.
Fourth is otplol_, the first European representative for LoL on this leaderboard. The French broadcasting team saw its quarterly watch time rise by 55% in Q1 2024 thanks to the regional league that saw a new record for peak viewership thanks to the participation of teams like Gentle Mates and Karmine Corp Blue, owned by well-known streamers Gotaga and Kamet0, respectively.
There's also the official Twitch channel of the LEC that made this list in eighth place. This was another Spring split in League of Legends that saw a new high in viewership figures, with the league, known for being previously unstable, showing growth in viewership when compared to last year’s edition.
Next comes the official PGL Twitch channel itself with 12.92M HW thanks to the success of the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, which ended as the third most popular event ever in Counter-Strike. It also ended sixth on the overall watch time standing, helped by not only Gaules' involvement but also a victory for Natus Vincere, the most popular team in the discipline competing again without star player s1mple.
The Ukrainian side became just the third club to win multiple Majors, joining Fnatic and Astralis in this exclusive club. Another factor for the channel's success was the growth of Ukrainian, Turkish, Mongolian, and Romanian, with all three languages setting new peak viewership records.
The final two places are taken by Dota 2 representatives, with dota2_paragon_ru in the sixth spot and ESL_DOTA2 coming tenth (both Twitch). Both have been extensively covering the various tournaments happening in the discipline, including renowned ones like DreamLeague Season 22, Elite League, and BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2024.
Top esports organization Twitch channels
With seven of the top ten making the overall list, the first fresh name is ESLCS, the CS2 wing of the well-known organizer. It hit 6.82M HW for covering competitions like the Copenhagen Major, IEM Katowice 2024, BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2024, and BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown 2024.
Sticking to the legendary Valve shooter, the official BLASTPremier channel is also on this list, in tenth. It is joined by the sole Valorant representative on this standing, the VALORANT_jpn handle that has been covering numerous local and global events, including qualifiers, in one of the games' more popular regions. In fact, Japanese audiences were one of the reasons the VCT 2024: Pacific Kickoff became the game's most popular event for the region ever.
Top esports organization YouTube channels
Among the top channels by views on the red platform are four that have already been spoken about earlier and a few more associated with these leagues — PGL, LEC, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Indonesia, and LCK Global. The first fresh name is Liên Quân Mobile eSports, the official channel for all things Arena of Valor aimed at Vietnamese audiences. The game is a pretty big deal in this region, and Asia in general, and with its esports season kicking off across Q1 2024, interest steadily built up, culminating in a total watch time of 6.75M HW.
The official Call of Duty League, where all the action related to Activision's long-running franchise is broadcast, comes in the seventh position. It was mostly boosted by the first two Majors of the year and their qualifier events. Both events ended up being pretty successful, with the Call of Duty League 2024: Stage 1 Major recording 21% more peak concurrent viewers than the previous Major.
Rounding off this list is another channel related to Arena of Valor, Garena RoV Thailand, which live streams everything related to the Thai version of the game, labeled Realm of Valor. It was mostly thanks to the RoV Pro League 2024 Summer, with the game seeing massive changes later this year via the international release of Honor of Kings and its integration into the Esports World Cup 2024.
It is obvious from these lists that Twitch and YouTube, while successful in their own rights, depend on different factors. The purple platform is more geared towards a Western audience that loves shooter and MOBA disciplines on the PC/console, while the latter has a huge presence in Asia, where it gets most of its viewers thanks to the prevalence of mobile esports.
There was also a marked rise in the quarter-on-quarter watch times for Lol and CS2 on Twitch, aided by the huge successes of many of their tournaments. Valorant also had an identical rise to its shooter brethren, but it could not make much headway in terms of the above lists, proving how enduring and entrenched the former two titles are in terms of fan engagement and interest when it comes to competitive action.
