Day 3 of the Halo Championship Series (HCS) Kickoff Major in Raleigh shattered previous attendance records, peaking at 267,000 concurrent viewers. When Day 1 came around and set the bar for Halo Infinite’s LAN scene, the final day’s matchups raised the bar even higher. The tournament had over 113,000 average concurrent viewers throughout the three-day event, according to Esports Charts.
With over 100 thousand concurrent viewers on Day 1 of the HCS Raleigh event. That was enough to outperform any previous Halo event in terms of attendance. However, as the event progressed and the stakes became higher, more viewers tuned in. The first-day viewership record was broken on the last day, according to Tahir Hasandjekic, the Halo Esports lead at 343 Industries, who tweeted about it.
The event eventually reached 267,000 people after his tweet. The event was watched by just over a quarter of a million Halo fans. These figures include the main streams on YouTube and Twitch, as well as co-streams on both platforms. It helped that the game’s fans were watching because of the free items on offer at the event. In any case, the first event’s numbers are impressive. The Halo 5 championships didn’t even get close to these numbers in terms of viewership.
Other notable figures from Esports Charts include the fact that fans watched over 3.6 million hours over the weekend. The final between Cloud9 and eUnited, the loser’s finals between eUnited and FaZe Clan, and finally the more recent matchup between Optic Gaming and Sentinels were the most popular matches by peak viewership in descending order.
As the year progresses, the Halo esports roadmap remains on track. Only time will tell whether this high level of interest in future LAN events will translate to online tournaments.
