DreamLeague Season 23 concluded with another championship title for Team Falcons, an international squad from Saudi Arabia, marking their fourth million-dollar tournament victory in 2024. However, beyond this achievement, DreamLeague Season 23 had few notable highlights: the event struggled to attract a significant audience and fell short of the metrics set by previous top-tier Dota 2 tournaments of the year.
The group stage of DreamLeague Season 23 was particularly memorable due to the unexpected elimination of Team Liquid, which was the most popular team at that stage. This likely contributed to the tournament's overall low viewership. Gaimin Gladiators and Team Falcons emerged as the top teams in the groups, eventually facing each other in the championship match. Interestingly, Gaimin Gladiators defeated Team Falcons in the upper bracket final, only to lose decisively to them in the grand final.
BetBoom Team and Xtreme Gaming also reached the semifinals, consistently performing well in tournaments, making their results at DreamLeague Season 23 well-deserved.
The matches of DreamLeague Season 23 generated just over 9 million Hours Watched and 261.3K Peak Viewers, ranking only ninth among all tournaments in the series by both metrics. The most popular match was the grand final between Gaimin Gladiators and Team Falcons, with Team Falcons also emerging as the most-watched team of the event.
Falcons attracted the most viewers during the broadcasts, except for the notorious match between BetBoom Team and Aurora, which ranked second in peak viewership. During this decisive elimination match, Aurora players experienced internet issues; organizers waited for their return, but the team couldn't resolve the problems in time. As a result, Aurora was unable to finish the match, received a technical defeat, and exited the tournament.
DreamLeague Season 23 significantly lagged behind the previous season in watch time. However, comparing events solely by this metric is not entirely fair. DreamLeague organizers alternate tournament formats, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing the number of participants. This affects the number of group stages, matches, and airtime. Consequently, there was a huge difference in total hours of watch time: 9 million HW compared to 25.7 million HW in the previous season.
When comparing viewer numbers, the peak viewership for DreamLeague S23 was 15% lower than Season 22. Additionally, the average viewership decreased by 16.6%. Given the format differences, DreamLeague S23 should be compared to DreamLeague S21; however, this comparison would reveal an even greater disparity in viewer numbers between the events.
The decline in viewership on official channels stands out as a significant factor contributing to the drop in statistics. For instance, during DreamLeague Season 22, the dota2_paragon_ru channel averaged 41.8K viewers, but this figure plummeted to 27.1K during Season 23. Similarly, esl_dota2 experienced a decline from 33.5K to 26.2K average viewers.
This downward trend extends to other secondary official channels as well. In contrast, Gorgc, the most popular community caster for both tournaments, maintained relatively stable viewership metrics. In Season 22, he gathered 11.3K Average Viewers and 18.8K Peak Viewers, while he had 10.8K AVG and 18K Peak Viewers in Season 23.
During the first half of 2024, the professional Dota 2 scene hosted six million-dollar tournaments. However, despite its prestige, DreamLeague Season 23 surprisingly experienced one of the lowest audience engagements compared to PGL Wallachia Season 1, BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2024, ESL One Birmingham 2024, and even its predecessor, DreamLeague Season 22, across all metrics. Notably, even the release of a major balance patch, version 7.36, just before the playoff stage failed to boost the tournament's audience reach.