Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege remains one of the most unique competitive shooters in esports. With its fast-paced, tactical gameplay requiring seamless teamwork, players are pushed to bring discipline and skill to the gaming arena. This excitement radiates out to the fans, creating a spectacle worthy of esports glory.
The annual Rainbow Six Siege Invitational is the culmination of this energy, pitting the top players in the game against one another in massive stadiums across the globe. The Six Invitational 2024 was no exception: Taking place from the 13th to the 25th of February, pro players competed across group stages, playoffs and the grand final for the tournament’s iconic trophy: The Caber, a massive sledgehammer.
With so much hype around the event, the Six Invitational 2024 was able to pull in the largest peak audience since the tournament’s inception back in 2017. Surprisingly, however, many viewers tuned in to the tournament through expert co-streamers like Jynxzi rather than the tournament’s official stream itself.
The Rainbow Six Invitational 2024 Thrives On Its Grand Final Event
The Six International kicked off on the 13th of February for a two-week tournament. As expected, viewership rose gradually as news spread of the tournament, with average viewers rising 20K across the first week of the group stages and playoffs. Viewership spiked for the grand final, where W7M Esports took home the hammer, hitting a top average viewership of 376K for the final day – a near five-fold increase from the first day’s average viewership of 80K.
While viewership for tournaments is expected to peak in the final rounds, what’s more surprising is the relative absence of an effect from the roster for each day. In traditional sports, one might expect certain teams to pull in higher ratings. The indifference to which teams are playing suggests that fanbases are either evenly split, or that fans primarily tune in for the game rather than to barrack for their favorites.
The Rainbow Six Invitational 2024 Hits a Peak Viewership Record Ever
The Six Invitational 2024 broke new ground for Rainbow Six Siege viewership, outperforming all previous iterations of the event with a peak viewership of 519K for the grand final. This represents a 145% increase from the peak viewership of last year’s event, instilling confidence in the future growth of Rainbow Six Siege esports. Even more impressively, the peak viewership vastly outperforms the event’s historical peak, beating out the previous record of 298K peak viewers from the Six Invitational 2021 (performed during the pandemic).
This renewed interest in the game may be due to developer Ubisoft’s partnership with esports company Blast, which began in 2022. As the collaboration found its feet, advertisers flocked to Rainbow Six Siege and brought the money needed for marketing with them. One other tactic also paid off massively in drawing in new viewers to the game: Co-streaming.
Co-streamers Like Jynxzi are Integral to the Success of the Rainbow Six Invitational 2024
Part of the Six Invitational 2024’s success can be attributed to co-streamers pulling their fans into the action. Across all platforms, 3.4M of the total hours watched for the Six Invitational 2024 came from co-streaming alone. That amounts to 27.6% of the total hours watched coming from co-streaming, solidifying co-streaming as an integral component of esports promotion. Ubisoft itself had paid for many of these co-streams: A clever strategy for attracting creators’ fans to the Six Invitational hype.
Given the effectiveness of this paid co-streaming strategy, it’s likely other esports events from League of Legends to Valorant will take a page out of Ubisoft and BLAST’s book. Even in streaming, partnering with influencers continues to be an effective way of merging audiences while alerting newcomers to events happening in the crowded entertainment space.
Naturally, the success of the co-streaming strategy relies upon partnering with the right creators. For the Six Invitational, two streamers stood out among the rest: Jynxzi and RazaH. The two streamers used vastly different strategies: RazaH streamed for 112 hours over the course of the Six Invitational, pulling in 898K hours watched – significantly more than other high-coverage streamers. Jynxzi far outperformed RazaH however, gaining 1.1M hours watched from just 12 hours of streaming. Jynxzi alone contributed 32% of all hours watched for co-streamers, showcasing his rapid growth over the past 6-8 months.
Although the official stream has professional commentators, it’s likely that many fans enjoy watching the competition alongside their favorite streamers for their personalized insight into the action. Commentators like Jynxzi have both the expertise and entertaining personality to guide even a casual audience through the gameplay. Additionally, popular streamers also pull in larger communities, allowing for more educated discourse in their chat rooms.
With Rainbow Six Siege entering Year 9, Ubisoft is gearing up for a massive 10th anniversary. Fans can expect viewership for the Six Invitational to reach new heights next year, with some big promotional moves by BLAST and Ubisoft to elevate the event. But co-streamers will remain a massive draw card for viewers of not just the Six Invitational, but all esports. Stream Hatchet will be keeping an eye on Rainbow Six Siege and co-streaming moving forward.
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