Counter-Strike 2 became the most watched game among esports broadcasts on Twitch in January-March 2025, collecting an impressive 99.16 million hours of viewing, according to escharts. The highest peak viewership also occurred in this discipline, with 937,876 simultaneous views during the season's main tournament, IEM Katowice 2025.

Despite the strong competition from League of Legends (78.4 million HW) and Dota 2 (59.1 million HW), CS2 retained the top spot thanks to a busy tournament schedule. Among the main events were ESL Pro League Season 21, BLAST Open Spring 2025, and the aforementioned IEM Katowice, which became the key event with the highest attendance for the quarter.

Twitch vs. YouTube audience

Twitch has traditionally maintained an advantage among Western audiences and PC players, while YouTube has been performing well in the mobile segment, especially in Southeast Asia and Latin America. This difference is also reflected in the viewership ratings.

On Twitch, the top games are Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Dota 2, Valorant, and R6 Siege. On YouTube, League of Legends (52.56 million HW), Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (42.67 million HW), and only third is Counter-Strike with 40.03 million hours of viewing.

Interestingly, CS2 lagged far behind the leaders on YouTube in terms of peak performance: 381,215 viewers, while Mobile Legends reached 1.2 million and League of Legends 1.1 million.

Stable advantage on Twitch

Despite lagging behind on YouTube, CS2 continues to dominate on Twitch. This confirms the resilience of the game's fanbase among the Twitch viewers, as well as the fact that CS2 streams remain one of the main audience magnets for ESL, BLAST, and other organizers.

Counter-Strike has once again proven that it remains not only the flagship of classic esports, but also the main source of views in the first quarter of the year - and this is even before the start of the main season with major tournaments in spring and summer.