Counter-Strike 2 is the best esport on the planet. Compared to League of Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch, Valorant, and countless others, I truly believe that it's the absolute best out there. I say this from a position of working a significant amount in esports, and even watching tournaments in other games too, like Valorant and Deadlock. I know how much of an audacious claim that is to some, but there are a lot of reasons why I believe it's the case.
5 It's easy to get into
As a spectator or a player
Games like Overwatch and Valorant can seem daunting thanks to the sheer amount of abilities and things happening at once. You need to learn who does what, how they do it, and how those abilities might impact the current state of play. The same goes for games like League of Legends and Dota 2, where there are 170 champions in League and 126 heroes in Dota. That's a lot to be learned, and then you need to learn all of the items too.
In contrast, Counter-Strike is simple. There have been relatively few changes over the years, with most of the game's advancement comes from players discovering new tricks, new strategies, and the occasional map change or rotation. There's a money system for purchasing weapons and utility, and it's very easy to see when someone gets a nice kill. There's no understanding that a certain ability combination got the kill; it's all about what you can see on your screen easily.
People understand money, they understand guns, and that's all there really is to get started. I brought my dad to a cinema showing of the ESL One Cologne 2015 Major final (Fnatic vs EnVyUS), and as someone who had never played Counter-Strike, he had a few questions but understood all you need to know to enjoy the game in just a few rounds.
Getting started is similarly easy, though there's a lot to learn. It's almost deceptively simple as a new player if you've watched the game before, but the amount that you can learn to improve is impressive.
4 It's one of the oldest esport titles in the world
With a lot of history still relevant today
When it comes to longevity, nothing beats Counter-Strike. Started as a mod of Half-Life in 1999, the game quickly grew to become one of the first major esport titles. Valve hired its developers in 2000, acquiring the rights to the title and officially releasing Counter-Strike 1.0 that year. Counter-Strike hosted some of the first LAN tournaments alongside the likes of Quake and Unreal Tournament, with the Cyberathlete Professional League being one of the first major organizers to run tournaments in the game.
Since then, tournaments have grown from filling hallways to filling stadiums. They went from local events to global competitions, with massive prize pools to boot. The first Counter-Strike tournament hosted by CPL boasted a $100,000 prize pool in March of 2000, with the PGL Shanghai Major packing a $1.25 million prize pool. Many analysts, casters, coaches, and players have been around since the game's inception, which means that the historical depth of the game still lives on.
Counter-Strike is an esport enriched by its history, with some players having stories that span decades. For example, FaZe Clan, one of the best teams in the world, is led by Finn "karrigan" Andersen, who has been playing for 19 years and started in Counter-Strike 1.6. He recently lost the PGL Shanghai Major to the 18-year-old Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, a player younger than the number of years of experience he has in the game.
3 It's highly accessible
Counter-Strike 2 runs on anything
While Counter-Strike 2's system requirements upped the ante in terms of requirements, the game is still a far cry away from 2025 standards of minimum requirements when it comes to games. Many players play at a lower resolution as well, including professional players on the best setups imaginable, so you don't need to worry about being at a competitive disadvantage if you need to lower your settings to play at a higher refresh rate.
For reference, the minimum requirements include an Intel Core i5-750 and a DirectX 11-compatible GPU with 1GB of VRAM. That's not exactly a tall ask, and gives you an idea of how playable the game is with modern hardware. There are some more modern esports titles (such as Valorant and Overwatch) that require significantly better hardware.
2 A clear progression path
ESEA and FaceIt
In games like Valorant, League of Legends, and Overwatch, the built-in ranking system serves as a pretty good global indicator of skill. In Counter-Strike, though, that isn't quite the case. While the game's Premier Ranked mode is better than the old system of Silver to Global Elite, most budding professionals will switch to a third-party platform once they reach a certain level of skill. This creates a pretty clear progression path, with FaceIt being the third-party provider that provides continental rankings and country rankings.
On FaceIt as well, there are open league tournaments that are seen as "standard" of sorts. In Counter-Strike terms, telling someone that you're an "Advanced" player (a division within the ESEA league on FaceIt) has a very clear meaning, and gives a better indicator of the kind of player that you are versus telling someone that you're a "Radiant" in Valorant. Plus, FaceIt has the Faceit Pro League (FPL), the top-level of ranked competitive in Europe and requires qualification through the open ranked system to achieve.
There's a very clear progession path with milestones along the way, and all of those milestones have a chance of getting you noticed. It's not like in other games where you play ranked and maybe get spotted in a top ranking in a region, you can be scouted and potentially picked up from any of the centralized leagues where players can demonstrate their skill.
1 Supported by a massive community
From content creators to third-party services
Because of how old Counter-Strike is, there's a massive communtiy of players that have also been following the game for decades. As a personal anecdote, I ran a Counter-Strike tournament in Dublin at a live stage as part of a wider gaming festival. Counter-Strike had the biggest crowd by far of all of the esports titles that we ran, and I noticed that there were quite a few people who had brought their kids to watch the game. I talked to one of them, and it had turned out he had played Counter-Strike in his 20s, and he was amazed to see how it had grown and flourished over the years.
There are very few games out there with the same kind of staying power as Counter-Strike, and some of those players who have stuck around and played for that long can (and do) pass down their knowledge. There's a huge community on Reddit dedicated to the game, YouTube channels run by former professional players who show off tips and tricks, and even content creators that have been around for as long as the game has been.
TheWarOwl is one such example, a content creator who played a part in growing my interest in the game. He still exclusively produces videos to this day about Counter-Strike 13 years after his first Counter-Strike: Source video, and there are many others out there that dedicate their channels to showing off new utility lineups, teaching new players the ropes, or analyzing professional games so that the average player can learn and improve.
As part of that community love for the game, there are also many free workshop maps dedicated to improving your recoil control made by fans of the game, and third-party services like Refrag that will help you learn to clear angles, practice utility, and so much more.