Back from the summer break meant the second ESL Pro Tour Championship in 2025, seeing IEM Cologne gather 24 of the worlds best teams at our fifth event out of seven this year.
The reigning champions Team Vitality were dethroned in the semi-finals, with their over-powering force MOUZ eventually falling to Team Spirit in the Grand Final. Young prodigy Danil "donk" Kryshkovets having now won both IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne, as well as a Counter-Strike Major, all at the age of 18.
With the results in, we turn to an update to the Annual Club Incentive. The average concurrent viewership is based on the highest value of a team in either Stage 1 or Stage 2, only the highest and only one value per team is included. Playoffs are not included as it heavily favours those select teams advancing, these teams are already being rewarded via the Club Reward. Out of the 24 teams participating, only the top 12 ranked teams by average concurrent viewers were awarded viewership points based on the previously announced points matrix.
IEM Cologne 2025Viewership placement
Placement | Team Name | Average CCV | Viewership points |
|---|---|---|---|
1 |  Team Falcons | 479,088 | 8 |
2 |  FURIA | 358,560 | 8 |
3 |  Team Spirit | 358,241 | 8 |
4 |  Team Vitality | 320,690 | 8 |
5 |  Natus Vincere | 304,024 | 6 |
6 |  Astralis | 302,225 | 6 |
7 |  MOUZ | 301,672 | 6 |
8 |  The MongolZ | 293,086 | 6 |
9 |  FaZe Clan | 285,980 | 4 |
10 |  G2 Esports | 237,858 | 4 |
11 |  Aurora Gaming | 194,798 | 4 |
12 |  HEROIC | 175,016 | 4 |
13 |  GamerLegion | 167,388 | 0 |
14 |  Team Liquid | 150,055 | 0 |
15 |  BIG | 137,657 | 0 |
16 |  paiN Gaming
| 137,194 | 0 |
17 |  NIP | 129,118 | 0 |
18 |  FlyQuest | 122,509 | 0 |
19 |  TYLOO | 90,655 | 0 |
20 |  Virtus.pro | 88,477 | 0 |
21 |  3DAMX | 85,691 | 0 |
22 |  Complexity | 74,491 | 0 |
23 |  MIBR | 65,930 | 0 |
24 |  B8 Esports | 55,853 | 0 |
The Falcons debut for Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin attracted lots of attention from the community, which ultimately saw the team achieve the highest average viewership out of all attending teams. The most attention from an event peak concurrent viewers stance took place during the Team Spirit and MOUZ Grand Final clash, peaking over 1,000,000.
IEM Cologne was the fifth event of the year contributing to the Annual Club Incentive, the event distributed 72 viewership points, out of the 720 points available in 2025. There’s 234 points still up for grabs across the remaining two events; ESL Pro League Season 22 and IEM Chengdu.
As the fifth event of the year, the Event Multiplier continues to favour teams who consistently attended our events in 2025, generating the below current standings for the Annual Club Incentive.
Team Falcons remain at the top, extending their lead to second place since the previous update in June.
August 11th, 2025Annual Club Incentive
Placement | Team Name | Total viewership points | Events attended | Total points | Total points share | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |  Team Falcons | 48.5 | 5 | 242.5 | 13.4% | $394,581 |
2 | Team Vitality | 42 | 5 | 210 | 11.6% | $341,699 |
3 |  Team Liquid | 38.5 | 5 | 192.5 | 10.6% | $313,224 |
4 |  Natus Vincere | 40 | 4 | 160 | 8.8% | $260,342 |
5 | The MongolZ | 31.5 | 5 | 157.5 | 8.7% | $256,274 |
6 |  FURIA | 37 | 4 | 148 | 8.2% | $240,816 |
7 |  FaZe Clan | 33 | 4 | 132 | 7.3% | $214,782 |
8 | MOUZ | 25 | 5 | 125 | 6.9% | $203,392 |
9 | G2 Esports | 26 | 4 | 104 | 5.7% | $169,222 |
10 | Team Spirit | 26.5 | 3 | 79.5 | 4.4% | $129,357 |
11 | 3DMAX | 13 | 5 | 65 | 3.6% | $105,764 |
12 | HEROIC | 16 | 4 | 64 | 3.5% | $104,137 |
13 | Virtus.pro | 13 | 3 | 39 | 2.2% | $63,458 |
14 |  Eternal Fire | 18 | 2 | 36 | 2.0% | $58,577 |
15 | GamerLegion | 6 | 5 | 30 | 1.7% | $48,814 |
16 | Pain Gaming | 7 | 4 | 28 | 1.5% | $45,560 |
The $2,950,000 Annual Club Incentive concludes end-of-year 2025 and is paid out in Q1 of 2026 to the top 16 teams in the standings. Full details about how the Annual Club Incentive is calculated can be found here.
Next on the ESL Pro Tour calendar is ESL Pro League Season 22, set to take place in our Stockholm studios between September 28 - October 12. Stay tuned for another update to the Annual Club Incentive standings after its conclusion.
Outro
To keep up to date and not miss any important updates, as always, make sure to sign up for our newsletter and follow ESLCS on X, Instagram, and Facebook.
