For the first time, EA welcomed an onsite audience for the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Championship, which took place over the weekend at PNC Arena in Raleigh, NC. In addition the packed house, the audience peaked at more than 632,000 concurrent viewers for the final and the live stream averaged nearly 290,000 viewers across all platforms throughout the event – notching 11.2 million hours watched as DarkZero took home the title.

With a player base of more than 100 million people, Apex Legends is among the most popular battle royale games ever. Now in its second year, the ALGS is also among the most popular esports leagues on the planet, and last weekend’s championship marked the culmination of a rapid evolution in EA’s live-production workflows for the past two years.

Launched during the pandemic, with all tournaments online, the ALGS held its Year 1 Championship in-person in Stockholm but without an onsite audience. The Year 2 Championship last weekend was the first Apex Legends major event to be held with fans in the stands, creating an entirely new scenario for EA and its production partner PGL Esports.

Complementing the in-arena competition, the ALGS Championship delivered an interactive experience for viewers on Twitch, with a mix of cutting-edge broadcast technology (including Multiview), Twitch drops, exclusive content, and more.

SVG sat down with Joe Lynch, group head of content and programming, EA, to look back at how the production went in Raleigh, the workflows and technology used, what his team learned from its first-ever Apex Legends major event in front of a crowd, and how the Year 2 Championship marks a new era of EA’s Apex Legends esports-production efforts.