ESL FACEIT Group Reveals IEM Katowice 2024 Milestones

IEM Katowice 2024 milestones revealed

International tournament and gaming event organizer ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) revealed a number of milestones related to Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2024 Grand Finals, which concluded over the weekend. First, the event, which featured competitions in Counter-Strike 2 and StarCraft II, realized a peak viewership of 972K (during the grand final between Team Spirit and FaZe Clan), 288K average viewers, and 24.6M hours watched across 85 hours and 24 minutes of total airtime, according to data from Esports Charts. 

In the Counter-Strike 2 grand finals, Team Spirit managed to best FaZe Clan with a 3-0 win, thanks in part to sterling performance from 17-year-old prodigy Danil “donk” Kryshkovets, who made his big stage debut and was named the “ESL Pro Tour DHL MVP.” Team Spirit took home $100K USD of the $1M total prize pool, and is in the race to Intel Grand Slam V, earning a spot in the IEM Cologne Group Stage later this year. IEM Katowice 2024 Counter-Strike 2 was hosted at the Spodek Arena in Katowice, Poland, on Feb. 8 – 11.

 BASILISK StarCraft II player Joona “Serral” Sotala also won big at IEM Katowice; he was crowned champion after beating Maru 4-0, taking home $150K of the $500K total prize pool (and an additional $2.5K from Group Stage map wins). He’ll be making his way to the Esports World Cup later this year. The IEM Katowice 2024 StarCraft II tournament took place live at the MCK Auditorium (International Congress Center) on Feb. 8 – 11, in Katowice, Poland.

Finally, EFG announced that the 65,000 people visited both the Spodek Arena and MCK Auditorium across the four-day StarCraft II and three day Counter-Strike competitions. Organizers also hosted the IEM Expo during IEM Katowice (we assume this is a total cumulative number and doesn’t differentiate between one time visits from attendees and those who returned on multiple days). 

The Counter-Strike 2 leg of ESL Pro Tour continues with ESL Challenger League Season 47 on Feb. 13, and IEM Chengdu 2024 taking place on April 8-14, with the final three days taking place at an in-person event in Chengdu, China.

 The next ESL Pro Tour for StarCraft II is the ESL SC2 Masters: Spring season, with a live Finals to take place at DreamHack Dallas May 31 – June 2.

EFG is part of Savvy Gaming Group, which is backed by the Saudi Government’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund.

Editor’s note: following the publication of this story we added a small note on the attendance numbers for clarification.