• News

Over 20 million online viewers tuned in to watch Dota 2 'The International 4'

The viewer count peaked at 2 million over the course of the weekend for a huge weekend of Dota 2 competition.

Ozzie Mejia

July 29, 2014 3:20 PM

1

As competitive gaming continues to shoot off into new heights, Valve stands among its leaders. The viewer numbers for this year's Dota 2 'The International 4' tournament are in, with more than 20 million unique online viewers tuning in across various outlets, including Twitch and ESPN3. More than 2 million viewers tuned in concurrently during the event's peak.

This year's Grand Finals saw NewBee defeat the team of ViCi Gaming in what was considered to be a major blowout. The finals took place on Monday, July 21 during peak work hours, making the final viewer numbers that much more remarkable.

This was the first year that ESPN opted to dive into the Dota 2 phenomenon. The Daily Dot reported yesterday that ESPN was very pleased with its broadcast of the event and may seek to broadcast future competitive gaming events, such as those from Major League Gaming's Call of Duty league.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?