Over 750,000 viewers flock to witness s1mple's FaZe debut

IEM Dallas 2025 kicked off yesterday and a big part of the community awaited one matchup particularly more than others. It was FaZe's opening round game against Liquid where s1mple was set to make his debut with FaZe and return to competitive Counter-Strike. The stellar Ukrainian AWP was on loan from NAVI.

FaZe did not have an ideal start to the event and neither did s1mple have an ideal FaZe debut, but fans tuned in from across the globe in massive numbers to see witness the CS:GO legend's CS2 return. A peak viewership of 784,335 was recorded during FaZe's match against Liquid, nearly double the metrics of the second most popular entry in the list.

These numbers were reported on Esports Charts. The viewership data excludes Chinese platforms and given s1mple's fandom across China, these numbers could soar much higher.

FaZe however, conceded a 0-2 against Liquid and went down to the lower bracket where they continue the rest of their IEM Dallas 2025 journey with their backs against elimination. A silver lining if there was one, would be the fact that s1mple put up a 1.12 series rating while the rest of FaZe struggled to reach 1.00, showing that s1mple is not far away from firing on all cylinders.

With the stakes increased and tournament lifeline in question, FaZe's viewership numbers are likely to keep going up for the rest of the tournament as fans already indulge in discussions surrounding s1mple's performances under pressure. FaZe's first lower-bracket game comes later today against BC.Game who gave MOUZ a run for their money on Dust2 before going down 0-2.