Columbus 2016 CS:GO Major reaches record viewership

Activision Blizzard Media Networks has announced that Major League Gaming's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship (CS:GO Major) set new viewership records during its March 30 - April 3 broadcast from Columbus, Ohio.

The company says the event reached 71 million video views, was watched a record-breaking 45 million hours of live broadcast and set a new record of 1.6 million concurrent viewers across OTT, web, mobile and in-game streaming.

This breaks the previously-reported CS:GO Major record of 34 million hours viewed and 1.3 million concurrent viewers set at the 2015 CS:GO Major in Cologne, Germany.

This year's CS:GO Major was the first held in North America, with the world's best CS:GO teams competing for a $1 million prize pool. The competition, held at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, drew a sold-out crowd of over 10,000 fans for each of the three final days of live competition.

Counter-Strike competitions have been held globally for the past 16 years, with game developer Valve instituting a CS:GO Major system in 2014. The Columbus championship is the eighth CS:GO Major event held since 2013, and the first produced by MLG.

Activision Blizzard announced its Media Networks Division in October 2015, and recruited former ESPN CEO Steve Bornstein and MLG co-founder Mike Sepso to serve as the division's Chairman and Senior Vice President, respectively. Activision Blizzard acquired the business of MLG in December 2015.

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