Team Spirit's Donk victory in numbers
This has never happened before, and it will likely never happen again. Team Spirit's Danil "donk" Kryshkovets had taken the Counter-Strike 2 world by storm, dominating to a degree that's unheard of in the scene, but especially for a rookie.
The prodigy's dominance also boosted IEM Katowice's viewership, peaking just shy of a million viewers during donk's takeover of the Grand Finals against opponent FaZe.
A performance for the ages
Just 19 days ago, the Russian rifler turned 17, attending his first major offline event in IEM Katowice after years of outstanding online play, during which he announced himself as the potential next superstar.
At various points during the event, viewers and experts raised questions about whether or not donk could keep his consistency as opponents improved, already hitting the ground running during the Katowice Play-Ins.
Not only did he keep his performance, he improved steadily peaking up in an all-time great finals performance that nobody at the Spodek Arena has remotely come close to. Moreover, he did it from the entry position, taking on almost 30% of opening duels and winning 72.8% of them, the most out of any player by a large margin.
While the role is often used as cannon fodder for teams to execute their strategies based on the information the entry fragger gathers, donk didn't die all that much, ranking in the top 10 least deaths per round at IEM Katowice.
His teammate Dmitriy "sh1ro" Sokolov, who also showed an outstanding performance throughout the entire event, was almost unkillable, surviving more than half the rounds with a death-per-round ratio of 0.49. While doing so, he put his opponents in a world of hurt. Here are some of donk's most impressive numbers:
Damage
Damage per round - 110.0 (1st)
Damage difference per round - +38.1 (1st)
Kills
Kills per round - 1.11 (1st)
Kill/Death difference - +116 (1st)
1+ Kill rounds - 64.3% (1st)
Total kills - 261 (1st)
Headshots
Total headshots - 144 (1st)
Headshots per round - 0.61 (1st)
Entry fragger
Total opening kills - 59 (1st)
Opening kills per round - 0.25 (1st)
Success in opening duels 72.8% (1st)
Throughout the entire event, donk finished at an HLTV.org 2.0 rating of 1.70 during the main event, a slight uptick from his 1.64 during the Play-Ins.
For the Grand Finals, he put down a master class, at 1.93 rating with a kill-death score of 82 to 40 at 124 average damage per round - an unheard-of finals performance against what was assumed to be the strongest CS2 team since the game's launch in September 2023.
Donk draws incredible viewership
The arrival of a new CS superstar travelled far and wide, helping IEM Katowice to a solid approximate 20% improvement in YoY viewership. According to the viewership analytics tool esportscharts, the final of Team Spirit against FaZe peaked at 972312 viewers, with a 287710 viewer average for the entire main event.
Naturally, Team Spirit became one of the most-watched teams at the event, together with their Grand Finals opponents FaZe and Falcons, rounding out the top 3.
Team Spirit and donk hit form just in time for the European RMR for the PGL Copenhagen Major, with Group B kicking off on February 19. There awaits Team Vitality, the other CS2 powerhouse which had flunked out of IEM Katowice early and avoided playing Spirit. Donk vs the best player of 2023, Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut? Yes, please!
