Check twitter, Nearly all the former cs players made a reference to the pgl major after Navi won. Shows that CS is a bigger esport than Val, in terms of viewership. Also can't compare amount of players, why? Because riot doesn't release that info, so your assuming playerbase. Also val is popular in Asia because val advertises it there and cs struggled in NA, because of covid and the lack of top tier tournaments in NA. Eu plays csgo because they have worth ethic and they have a stable scene. Like what twistzz said, not many people are trying in NA cs when they can go to valorant and have a even playing field, rather than practicing 10k + hours on cs
not a single person on my feed mentioned csgo, matter of fact, I didnt even know PGL (idk what that is LOL) was going on
nobody in america cares about csgo, just because you have the same pros from 2016 (6 years ago mate) doesnt mean the rest of the games population hasnt moved on to fortnite, apex, league, val, or any other game out there
you live in a hltv bubble mate
except the biggest VAL server population is EU followed by Asia, than NA
meanwhile csgo... remove eu population game won't even have 60k concurrent players
the only diff between val and csgo is that val is truly a global game, sure it's not the most popular everywhere but csgo just exists in EU, its like crossfire in China