The BLAST R6 Major Salt Lake City has become the most-watched Rainbow Six Siege Major in history by Hours Watched, according to data from Esports Charts.
DarkZero won the tournament in front of their home crowd, defeating fellow NA roster Shopify Rebellion 3-1 in the Grand Finals.
New format delivers excitement and viewership
The tournament amassed 7,703,132 hours watched over the eleven-day event, surpassing the hours watched of all previous Majors and the 2018 Six Invitational.
Hours Watched is a key metric for tournament organizers and advertisers in the esports space, as it combines how many viewers are engaged with the tournament, as well as how long they are engaged.
The tournament was the third most-viewed Major in Rainbow Six Siege history by peak viewership, with 247,776 peak viewers, more than doubling the peak viewership of the BLAST R6 Munich Major, the most recent Major before Salt Lake City.
The peak viewership for Salt Lake City was only 20,874 viewers lower than the peak viewership of the Six Invitation 2026, the biggest event in Ubisoft’s R6 circuit, but surpassed SI 2026 by Hours Watched.
The tournament seemingly benefited from its new format, adding a GSL Play-in phase for the lowest-ranked teams. Those teams then fed into the Swiss Stage.
Interestingly, the tournament’s viewership spikes despite a shorter overall Playoffs phase, as the playoffs were reduced to a single-elimination bracket.
While the bracket provided fewer playoff matches, it seems that fans responded well to the ‘winner-takes-all, loser-goes-home’ format, garnering strong viewership on several matches.
Notably, Shopify Rebellion’s playoff matches were all featured in the most-viewed matches of the event, with the all-North American Grand Final proving especially popular for the timezone.
The Jynxzi effect
According to Esports Charts’ data, the event pulled strong viewership from co-streaming. 47% of the total Hours Watched of the event came through co-streamers.
Most notably, Nicholas ‘Jynxzi’ Stewart pulled 1.44 million hours watched across the course of the event, peaking at over 70,000 viewers in the Grand Final, representing 28.2% of the peak viewership number.
The streamer is native to the R6 community, but has recently explored other esports, including Rocket League, Counter-Strike 2, and League of Legends, where his recent tournament drew over 900,000 viewers.
But galivanting across the esports landscape did not stop the streamer from returning to the game that popularized him, contributing to the BLAST R6 Major Salt Lake City’s strong viewership.
Did the format improve the event for you? Let us know on our Discord!
For more news, see how LA Theives won CDL Major III.
Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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