NAVI, FaZe dominate CS viewership stats

Yesterday on Counter-Strike's twenty-sixth birthday, Esports Charts took to X, posting the most popular Counter-Strike matches in the game's history. While the records date back until 2016 its safe to consider it an "all-time" metric given the steady rise of viewership numbers year after year.

All three matches in this list has NAVI in it, including two FaZe-NAVI clashes. Coming in at #3, FaZe's grand-final clash over NAVI in the first ever Counter-Strike 2 Major, PGL Copenhagen 2024 had put up 1,853,954 peak viewers towards the end. FaZe came into the Copenhagen Major as massive favorites. FaZe were winning everything in their path upon Counter-Strike 2's release.

While s1mple, a CS:GO legend hit a speedbump in his Counter-Strike 2 transition, players like ropz put their head down and stepped on the gas, taking their game to the next level. At the Copenhagen Major, a s1mple-less NAVI winning the Major was the last thing that anyone had expected.

The second spot in this list goes to another FaZe-NAVI matchup. This time we head back to PGL Antwerp 2022; NAVI were coming in as the defending champions and s1mple was firing on all cylinders. despite karrigan's unmatched aura and stage presence, the Dane had never bagged a Major and what better way to do it than taking down one of CS:GO's legends? FaZe did end up taking down NAVI, netting karrigan his first Major trophy and the game drew in peak viewership of 2,113,610.

The most popular Counter-Strike match of all time is NAVI's grand-final match against G2 at PGL Stockholm 2021. Returning to a Major setting after the global pandemic, NAVI rocketed their way into the grand-final. It was at this time, s1mple was highly regarded as a Counter-Strike legend but Major glory kept eluding the G.O.A.T time after time. The Stockholm Major's grand-final was filled with emotions. Against s1mple was NiKo on G2, another legend who kept falling short of Major glory.

One of these two legends would walk away with their first Major win, adding the most coveted Counter-Strike trophy to their already decorated Counter-Strike careers. After NAVI took the first map, G2 fought hard in a thrilling double-overtime encounter on Nuke. G2 had a three round buffer in regulation and NiKo had the chance to close out Nuke 16-12 but as he climbed up into A-site's heaven disaster struck.

"Times it to perfection and s1mple.. (NiKo) A sitting duck.. NOOO! DISASTER! AN ABSOLUTE DISASTER! THAT WAS IT; THAT WAS THE GAME! MIRAGE WAS ONE CLICK AWAY!"- words etched into the mind of every Counter-Strike fan. NiKo whiffed a deagle headshot on s1mple who was facing away and s1mple was quick on the trigger, 180-ing NiKo as b1t took down the other Kovač, pushing the game into overtime, where NAVI closed the map and won the grand-final as s1mple lifted his first Major trophy.

This grand-final peaked at 2,748,434 peak viewers. All these stats exclude Chinese platforms. Given NiKo and s1mple's Chinese fanbase this game would have most likely put up a peak viewership figure well over the 3,000,000 mark. Nothing has come close in terms of storyline ever since.