In the opening months of 2025, Counter-Strike reigned supreme over other top esports when it comes to viewership, beating the likes of League of Legends, Valorant, Dota 2, and others to claim the number one spot as most-viewed esport.
Counter-Strike has long led the way for esports in a number of ways, and viewership is certainly one of them. Over the years, the FPS title – alongside Riot Games’ MOBA phenomenon League of Legends – has battled to be considered the number one esport in the world.
While that title has flitted between them at different times, the start of 2025 has seen CS reign supreme once again, reaching almost 140 million hours watched across Twitch and YouTube.
That number was accrued through tournaments such as IEM Katowice, a huge event in the CS calendar, and BLAST Open Spring.
While Counter-Strike stood tall at the top of Twitch viewership, it actually only came in third on YouTube, beaten by League of Legends and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
Dota 2 and Valorant were fairly even on Twitch, but Riot’s shooter took the cake out of the two on YouTube, where Dota couldn’t quite hold it as close.
Perhaps a surprise entrant for fifth place on Twitch was Rainbow Six Siege, thanks almost entirely to the viewership numbers of its world championship event, the Six Invitational.
This will likely change throughout the year as other games have their biggest tournaments. For example, the League of Legends World Championship and Dota 2’s The International both take place in the final few months of the year, so we could see them both push Counter-Strike off its perch.
