With the year coming to a close, the tournaments wrapped up, and players readying themselves for next year’s campaigns, it’s time to look back at everything that happened and the state of the esports industry in 2024.
Here’s our recap and review of Esports in 2024:
PGL Copenhagen Major 2024 Stage Storming
Image Credit: PGL
After an inauspicious start with Katowice in February, the Counter-Strike world be rocked by what was perhaps the bizarre in-person occurrence ever at a live esports event. During the PGL Copenhagen Major 2024, protestors stormed the stage during the G2 vs. MOUZ quarterfinal.
This was eventually discovered to be a protest/advertising stunt by a rival Counter-Strike skin trading platform to G2’s former sponsors CSGOROLL. The storming was planned and perpetrated by people affiliated with CSGOEmpire. Overall, the entire incident was a strange and disappointing start to the esports year.
Counter-Strike skin trading isn’t exactly the shining beacon of integrity at the best of times. By mirroring tactics similar to groups like Just Stop Oil, who made headlines throughout 2023 and 2024 by storming stages, throwing soup and paint over famous paintings, and generally doing ‘nuisance’ protests, the CS skin trading industry further donned the clown makeup it already wore so well.
Luckily, this was an isolated incident. I’d love to say that esports has upped its security, and skin traders have reneged on their ways, but in reality that’s just not happened. In a lightly reported incident at TI13, several Dota 2 fans with BOXI written across their chest were caught as they stormed the stage attempting to celebrate with TI-winners Team Liquid. Three of the four were apprehended by security before making the stage.
Mobile Esports Expansion in 2024-2025
Image Credit: EWC
The big winner in terms of expansion in 2024 has been the overall mobile esports scene. Once a fringe part of the industry, focused primarily in markets like India and SEA, mobile esports has expanded considerably with a huge amount of events this year and next.
The sub-genre’s biggest boon is its accessibility. Games like MLBB, PUBG Mobile, and HoK are on the path to global domination, and have grown in popularity even outside of their traditional heartlands in China and SEA.
It’s the future planning that’s the biggest surprise. Over the past year, MLBB, PUBG, and others have all laid down expansive plans for the future, with international tournaments, regional events, and third-party tournament support. And that’s before we consider the likes of the Esports World Cup, where Mobile Esports had a broad global audience for perhaps the first time.
The Esports World Cup 2024
Image Credit: EWC
If there was one event that overshadowed all else in 2024, and will likely do so for the foreseeable future, it’s the Esports World Cup 2024. Organized by the ESL FACE IT group, a subsidiary of the Savvy Gaming Group, a wholly owned part of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, the EWC was the culmination of around two years of acquisitions and mergers.
The Saudi Arabian Government-backed EWC ran for eight weeks from July to August, absorbing 20% of the entire esports calendar into a black hole. During that time it mired the industry in ‘discussions’ about its ethics, quality, the safety of competitors, and, by less reputable voices, how dang great it was. After the dust settled, Team Falcons, a Saudi Arabian-based team also supported and funded by the Saudi Arabian state, were declared the overall winners of the tournament their sponsor’s parent company organized.
Beyond just the obvious criticisms about sports washing, conflicts of interest, and holding an event in a country that Amnesty International and the U.S. Department of State say falls well below universal standards of human rights, the quality and success of the EWC is also open to question. The most viewed event was League of Legends, partially because the most popular esports team in the world, T1, were competing in the most popular esports in the world, and were the victors. Beyond that, viewership was nothing to write home about, comparable and often lower than Majors for other events. The crowds have been criticized as anemic, the production lackluster, and overall was an underwhelming event.
Beyond this, since the EWC was partnered with most metric companies, including Esports Charts, the integrity of the reported numbers is questionable at best. That’s before the allegations of botting and embed stream shenanigans. Overall, it’s a sad indictment of where esports is in its evolution. And it looks like we’re in for this dog and pony show every year for the foreseeable future. Esports desire to separate itself from traditional sports has often manifested by ignoring lessons that sports has learned the hard way. While events like the Olympics and the World Cup, the Euros and Copa America, etc., restrain themselves to once every four years, the EWC is set to take place, each year, every summer, for eternity, presumably.
In 2025, the event is set to run for even longer!!! As if two months plus qualifiers and taking over the entire summer wasn’t enough. This year with the EWC going on, I took the opportunity to spend most of the summer months travelling, going to music festivals, visiting new places, and generally avoiding what was a fundamentally disappointing and dull tournament. Next year, I’ll definitely be doing the same.
Team Falcons Take The Stage
Image Credit: EWC
While Team Falcons was founded in 2017, it’s safe to say that 2024 was really their debut year in the wider world of esports. From the end of 2023 onwards, the organization started signing rosters left and right. October 2023 say then sign a CS2 roster, November the a Dota 2 team. In February and March they added Overwatch, Rainbow Six and Rocket League, and an Apex Roster in May.
By the time the EWC kicked off the team already had dozens of titles under its name, and having entered all but one of the events, claimed the club championship. While they’ve been building super teams, their effectiveness has been questionable. Dota 2 has to be their most successful endeavor, where the team has taken first place in nine of the 16 top tier events it’s taken part in since their founding. But the wheels have started to come off for Falcons at the close of 2024. Missing out on what would have been their crowning achievement of winning TI13, and falling to secure first or second place at the EWC’s Riyadh Masters 2024 were critical stumbling points that have continued into the end of the year.
Outside of Dota, Team Falcons has struggled to be the super teams they were lauded as. The CS team has struggled to break onto the podium at S-Tier events, and even the teams picked up specially for the Esports World Cup, not many managed to break into the highest echelons. The organization hasn’t fully downsized yet, but with results falling across the board, perhaps Falcons’ strategy will change for 2025.
T1 and Faker Win Again
Image Credit: Riot Games
Another League of Legends Worlds event, another trophy for Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and T1. After claiming victory in the aforementioned EWC, T1 actually struggled to qualify for Worlds 2024, such was the competition from in-region rivals. Nevertheless the Unkillable Demon King once again was able to perform a miracle, claiming victory for T1, South Korea, and, perhaps most surprisingly, Carl Martin Erik “Rekkles” Larsson, TI1’s surprising substitute player.
The semi-regular T1 victory lap has become something of a meme, as the player that can convincingly be called esports greatest of all time has taken his part-owned team to LoL’s highest levels of success for the fifth time.
Beyond just being a momentous personal and team achievement, T1’s regular trips to Worlds grand finals is also an essential part of League of Legends’ success as the most popular esport in the world. The event peaked at almost 7 million viewers during the finals (not including Chinese viewership) making it the most viewed esports event of all time. Worlds 2024’s peak viewership of 6.94 million was competing against Worlds 2023’s viewership of 6.4 million, jumping half a million in the space of a year.
In comparison, Worlds 2022’s final which featured T1 losing only just broke 5.1 million peak viewers, and Worlds 2021, which, unforgivably, didn’t feature T1 in the finals, had just 4.01 million peak viewers. While obviously the overall viewership is trending upwards, and it’s hard to say how Faker and T1’s presence boosts the number, it certainly helps, when T1’s fans are some of the most vocal, outspoken, passionate, and at times, delusional and toxic, around.
Hero Shooters Came Back! (Sorta)
Image Credit: NetEase
If there’s one thing no one had on their 2024 bingo card it was the revival of Hero Shooters. After the disaster that was Overwatch 2, and the shutdown of competitors like Battleborn and Paladins, it would have been a fair assessment to say that the genre was dead. Even the reception to the trailer for Concord – upon the reveal that it was a hero shooter – spelled doom (although we’ll come back to Concord…).
Then in May, rumors began to swirl of an unreleased Hero Shooter by CS and Dota 2 developer Valve, called Deadlock. This was a 6v6 Hero Shooter that used a MOBA-like ma, with the Valve level of quality. The game’s rise since then has been prodigious. The FOMO factor – the game could only be played by invite from someone who had the game or if you were invited as a tester by Valve directly – meant that at the end of September the game ballooned to almost 200,000 players without even being officially released.
But this was just a Valve thing, right? Hero Shooters are still dead in the water. That’s what conventional wisdom would tell you when Concord launched in August. It was immediately panned and struggled to get more than a few thousand players. In September, just as Deadlock was reaching its peak, Concord was pulled from sale, and eventually, the game was shuttered and the servers turned off.
Except in December, Marvel Rivals, a Marvel-IP inspired hero shooter, has taken the world by storm. It’s fun, it’s popular, and no one seems to care about the skin sales and the fact it’s basically just Overwatch with Wolverine.
It’s a confusing result. Is the answer to make your game free like Deadlock and Marvel Rivals? Concord had a price tag that made it almost an insane investment for the playerbase. But Overwatch 2 was free and that game has been slowly dying for two years now. Is it the competitive scene? The public perception of the developer and game? It’s hard to say. Whatever the formula is, Deadlock and Marvel Rivals have it, OW2 and Concord do now.
Changes and Looking Foward
In 2024, for the first time in several years, esports economic prospects appear to be looking up. Or at least that’s what people have convinced themselves. There are signs that there is a shift. With money flowing in from the Saudi PIF and more money than ever from betting sponsors, there’s a sense that unlike the venture capitalists that came before, this wave of investment is a bit more stable.
Beyond that, there’s been concessions from some of esports biggest publishers. Riot Games, for example, just recently made a bold decision to allow its League of Legends and VALORANT teams to be sponsored by betting companies – a red line for them in the past.
It seems that esports’ sometimes contentious relationship to betting sponsors has matured somewhat in 2024 – although whether this is a case of it being worn down over time, or a general reconsideration remains to be seen. However, the industry has a long way to go in terms of checks and balances and avoiding conflicts of interest. We’re in a world where teams are owned and sponsored by betting companies who then market bets on those same teams during events they sometimes sponsor. It’s rife for corruption. Still, for once, it appears there’s some money flowing. Even if it comes with some caveats.
In 2025, esports will find itself having to make some difficult decisions about these sponsors and how far it’s willing to go. Or, more likely, it won’t make those decisions until it’s far too late.