At this year’s gamescom, Ninjas in Pyjamas were crowned champions of the US$250,000 ESL One tournament. However, while the team’s epic victory was definitely headlineworthy for the Counter-Strike community, even those who are not followers of the game have had to marvel at the sheer number of people who tuned in to watch the event.

With an online concurrent viewership peak of 409,368 during the grand final, this breaks the previous record set at EMS One Katowice in the March of this year by over 160%, when Counter-Strike: Global Offensive became the most watched game on Twitch for the majority of its duration.

Ulrich Schulze, managing director of pro gaming at ESL, said of the achievement:

“It’s amazing to see the growth of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the eSports community. Just five months after ESL One Katowice, we see ESL One Cologne 2014 break our previous record by an amazing 161%. We had over 10 million sessions and were just shy of 3 million unique viewers for ESL One Cologne 2014. It’s absolutely amazing to see and we’re all very excited to get back to work and see where we can take Counter-Strike: Global Offensive next.”

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Pure’ concurrent spectator viewership on Twitch reached a massive 343,638 peak (a 153% increase on Katowice’s figures), all this equating to an incredible 856 years of content being watched over the course of just four days.

More information can be found at the official ESL One website, while you can find photos of the event on our Flickr.