It’s fair to say that the inaugural Fortnite World Cup was a pretty big deal in the world of esports competition. The finals saw some of the world’s greatest players battle it out over three days, with the solos winner Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf champion taking a whopping $3 million (£2.5 million) in prize money home. And it looks like viewing figures reflect how big an event it was for its fans – the Fortnite World Cup was the “most-watched competitive gaming event (excluding China) of all time.”
A press statement on site Indigo Pearl reveals that “over 19,000 fans attended the three-day Fortnite World Cup finals in person at the sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium. On Sunday during the solo finals, concurrent viewers peaked at over 2.3 million across YouTube and Twitch, making the Fortnite World Cup the most-watched competitive gaming event (excluding China) of all time.”
And these numbers don’t even factor in fans who decided to watch the event in-game and on “other streaming and social media platforms.” That’s a pretty impressive feat for the battle royale’s first World Cup event, especially when you consider it against some other comparative tournaments’ peak concurrent viewers.
For example, according to analytics service Esports Charts, the 2018 League of Legends World Championship had around 1.9 million peak viewers, not including Chinese viewers (the overall peak with them factored back in was actually over 200,000,000).
However, it’s worth noting that, as the site highlights, because the LoL championship was hosted in South Korea, its timezone could have had an effect on its Western audience. The Fortnite World Cup was hosted in New York.
Fortnite season X kicks off today. If you’re looking to jump in armed with some knowledge about what the next round will bring, get your first look at the game map, or check out our Fortnite missions list which includes them all in full.