Rocket League esports gets its own Superbowl Swifties to break RLCS viewership record
As Superbowl fever dies down after the Kansas City Chiefs won their second consecutive title with a thrilling overtime win against the San Francisco 49ers, Rocket League's engines are also cooling in the aftermath of one of the most electric seasonal curtain raisers esports as ever seen.
European Rocket League has set the tone for the rest of the season in an absolutely thrilling Major 1 Qualifier, having seen four predominantly French rosters reach the top four and go bumper-to-bumper for the first podium finish of the year.
But as the gameplay was being dubbed as some of 'the best series in years', fans were flooding in to set RLCS records, with many thanks to the famous superstar figures pioneering the Taylor Swift effect.
RLCS 2024 makes viewership history
Click to enlargeIn the final of the RLCS 2024 Major 1: Europe Open Qualifier 1, Karmine Corp and Gentle Mates Alpine's Grand Final set an RLCS record for the highest viewership for an online match in the esports' history, beating out the previous record (Season 9 EU Finals) by nearly 200,000 pairs of eyes.
According to Esports Charts, the KC vs GM8s final reached a whopping 413,177 fans, becoming the second-highest-peaking game ever, with only last year's World Championships Grand Final seeing more supporters.
Much of this success has quickly been credited to both Karmine Corp and Gentle Mates organisation co-owners and content extraordinaires Kamel "Kameto" Kebir and Corentin "Gotaga" Houssein, respectively, whose co-streams reached hundreds of thousands of French esports fans.
Kameto and Gotaga combine to make RLCS history
With his team reaching the European Grand Final on their debut game in Rocket League Esports, Gentle Mates' co-owner Gotaga saw his co-stream peak at an impressive 157,244 viewers alone, while his opponent Kameto also flirted with a six-figure peak.
It was also the first time ever that a qualifier match reached over 200,000 supporters, with every other peak viewership match above that figure coming from either a Major LAN, a World Championship, or in the case of the aforementioned Season 9 EU match, a regional-locked end-of-season Championship amid the pandemic.
Rocket League esports mogul Murty "Scheist" Shah dubbed the duo, and Moist Esports' Charles "Cr1TiKaL" White, as "Rocket League Taylor Swifts", given their influence of bringing in new eyeballs to the game.
Just as Swift did for the NFL, the co-streamers in France and beyond are boosting Rocket League ten-fold, and it promises to be quite the year as the four European Giants of KC, GM8s, Team Vitality, and Team BDS, who all appear to be the front runners for the Majors too, with the stakes escalating as we go on through the season.
