OG and Team Liquid faced each other in the finals of the recently concluded The International 2019, with the former becoming the first Dota 2 team to win back-to-back TI championships. Apparently, the grand finals between these two teams became Twitch’s most-watched Dota 2 event ever.
GitHyp, a site known for tracking viewership stats, says that around 1.1 million viewers watched the championship finals on Twitch. The International 2019 took place in Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai. And since the location is on the opposite side of the globe, fans in the US’ Eastern Time zone had to watch the event early on a Sunday morning. The event then stretched into the wee hours and beyond, but this did not stop western viewers from witnessing history.
Interestingly, despite the massive difference in time zones, the viewership numbers went up. And according to Esports Charts (which added viewers from other streaming platforms), the overall peak viewership for the Dota 2 tournament passed 1.9 million during the final round between Team Liquid and OG. And mind you, this figure does not even include Chinese streaming platforms!
As far as GitHyp’s figures are concerned, this year’s The International resulted in a 51 percent increase as compared to last year’s TI8. The latter, on the other hand, was held in Vancouver, Canada and saw a significant decrease of 100,000 in viewership over the previous year’s grand finals in Seattle.
It is safe to say that OG and Team Liquid’s grand final run was interesting to watch. After all, these Dota 2 teams were two-time hopefuls, with Liquid winning TI7 and OG taking home the grand prize last year. Unfortunately for Liquid, OG defended and lifted the Aegis of Champions for the second time in a row. Not only did OG win the prestigious tournament this year in a very domination fashion, they also made history after becoming the first team to win back-to-back TI championships.
Meanwhile, Valve recently announced that The International 2020 will take place in Stockholm, Sweden.
