The Dota 2 Bali Major 2023 tournament has now reached the playoffs, with only a few days till the season’s last Major’s decisive round. However, although social media was humming with great match moments and surprise teams, viewership statistics for the season’s most important Major tournament has been lagging significantly compared to the last few months.
Despite being hosted in Indonesia, one of the most passionate Dota 2 regions, data suggests Bali Major has become the least watched among all major tournaments in the 2023 season so far. According to Esports Charts, the competition is trailing in terms of viewership compared to this year’s Berlin Major and Lima Major, the latter of which has been widely criticised owing to various technical issues.
According to the charts, the viewership for the Bali Major 2023 is 26 per cent lower than the Berlin Major and 36 per cent lower than the Lima Major. At the moment, the current peak viewership for the Bali Major tournament is 255,813 with a total airtime of 61 hours 35 minutes. In comparison, the Berlin Major had 507,620 peak viewers out of a total airtime of 120 hours 25 minutes, while the Lima Major had 491,359 peak viewers out of a total airtime of 123 hours 40 minutes.
Multiple factors are believed of impacting the Bali Major’s viewership. One of the most highlighted issue is the gap in broadcast timing similar to Lima Major, where Dota 2’s major fanbases from the Chinese and European regions were forced to adapt to different time zone which is relatively far apart. This causes the audience to focus solely on the major games, missing out on other teams’ games. This was proved by the viewership stats during Gaimin Gladiators vs Quest Esports, which garnered the most views throughout the Bali Major group stage.
In addition to the difference in broadcast schedule, poor audio-visual quality and the lack of dedicated YouTube channel to watch this competition are considered to have dwindled the interest of online viewers. Furthermore, the hype around Bali Major is not as big as the previous two Majors. This has become a point of contention within the community, who criticised the Bali Major organiser, IO Esports, for their approach on social media publishing and the expensive tickets, which are deemed to be out of reach with the target market for Dota 2 esports enthusiasts.
Naturally, this number may potentially rise as a result of the big matches in the playoffs as well as the watch parties organised by a number of well-known teams and talents in the Dota 2 community. However, it is probable that it won’t have a substantial effect on the Bali Major viewership if the organiser failed to address the technical issues.
