The IEM Cologne 2022 tournament was notable not only for its exciting matches and stubborn competition in the final, which lasted almost six hours. According to the EsportsCharts service, the event took fifth place in history in terms of the number of spectators. At its peak, IEM Cologne 2022 had over 1.2 million viewers. Thus, it was slightly inferior to the ELEAGUE Major competitions of 2017 and 2018 (about 1.3 million each). Among the leaders of the top – PGL Major Antwerp 2022 (2.1 million viewers) and PGL Major Stockholm 2021 (more than 2.7 million).
It turns out that IEM Cologne 2022 turned out to be the most popular among events that do not have official major status. Most of all, unsurprisingly, we watched the finale – FaZe's match against NAVI attracted 1.2 million viewers. The most popular were English, Russian and Portuguese broadcasts. And all the matches of the tournament in which s1mple participated collected more than 9 million hours of viewing.
Meanwhile, one of the FaZe players Russell “Twistzz” Van Dulken was critical of the organizers' attitude towards this event. He noted that the tournament, which has been held since 2013, has special meaning for him and is one of the most significant of the season. But at the same time, the player believes that ESL does not pay enough attention to his development due to the fact that he does not officially have major status.
