A statistic now shows which 5 video games in e-sports reached the most viewer hours worldwide in 2023. Riot Games dominates the ranking with LoL and Valorant, but Valve (Steam) is also well represented with Counter-Strike and DOTA 2. However, the fifth game is likely to surprise even Western e-sports experts. Behind ‘Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’ is a subsidiary of the TikTok provider Bytedance.
Where does the statistic come from? The statistic comes from ‘Echarts.com‘, which has ranked the 5 largest e-sports titles of 2023 by viewed hours. However, Chinese live streaming platforms were excluded from the statistic.
For the rankings of the largest e-sport titles in the world, the viewer time of e-sports matches was taken. It is therefore not enough for a Twitch streamer to simply play LoL to appear in the statistics; it must be played with an e-sport background.
Rank 5: Valorant
The shooter from Riot Games reached a viewer time of 326.73 million hours. The free-to-play shooter was released in 2020 and is therefore still relatively new in the quintet of top titles.
The highlight in 2023 was the ‘Valorant Championship.’
Rank 4: DOTA 2
The MOBA from Valve reached 364.09 million hours. The highlight was the tournament ‘The International 2023’ – this year, however, the tournament had significantly fewer viewers than in previous years, due to a change in the philosophy of DOTA 2, which led to a reduction in prize money.
DOTA 2 grew in 2023 mainly because third-party events accumulated more viewer hours, such as the ‘Riyadh Masters 2023.’
Rank 3: Counter-Strike (Global Offensive & 2)
The shooter from Valve had 381.56 million viewed hours in 2023. This is significantly less than in 2022, even though with Counter-Strike 2 such a highlight was on the calendar year. But in 2023 there were simply too few major e-sports events in Counter-Strike.
However, the title made headlines this year again with its completely crazy skin system: Individual cosmetics are traded for incredibly high amounts.
Rank 2: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
This is a game that few in the West will know: It comes from ‘Moonton’, a subsidiary of Bytedance, the Chinese company behind TikTok. The game was released in 2016 for Android and iOS and is a kind of ‘Mobile LoL’: two 5-member teams compete against each other.
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang originally started with 10 heroes – now players have 123 to choose from.
The MOBA is free-to-play and is monetized through sales of skins and characters. It was released in 2016 as a ‘5vs5 MOBA’ also in the USA, but was sued by Riot Games in 2017 and had to rebrand.
In Southeast Asia, there is a vibrant e-sports scene for the game. A total of 530.16 million hours were viewed in 2023.
Number 1: League of Legends
With 590.94 million hours, LoL is again the industry leader. Especially the Worlds 2023 made a big impact, with nearly 150 million hours alone.
As Echarts notes, not everything is great in LoL either: In the established regions USA, Europe, and South Korea, LoL shrank in 2023, while in Vietnam it grew significantly.
Compared to 2022, the e-sport of LoL was viewed about 30 million hours less than in 2022.
The highlight in the e-sport of LoL 2023:
LoL Worlds: After years of failure, T1 and Faker become dominant world champions
