Guess LoL ain't dead yet
LoL Worlds Finals Breaks Viewership Records
This League of Legends World Championship was one for the ages with the comeback story of the century, as well as two of the greatest players of all time facing off against one another, all in the final game of the whole tournament.
Over 100 champions were played throughout the 1-month event and we got to witness some of the greatest plays. All this was done in front of a record-breaking crowd, but just how many people tuned in to an event many thought were doomed – in terms of viewership at least.
LoL Worlds Finals Has More Viewers Than Ever Before
The 2022 League of Legends Worlds Finals had over 5 million concurrent viewers at it's peak which was around the second match of the series. According to esports charts this makes it the second most viewed esports event ever, falling just short of beating the Free Fire World Series in 2021.
The next best League of Legends event in terms of viewership came from the 2021 League of Legends World Championship Finals between Edward Gaming and DAMWON KIA. Around 4 million concurrent viewers watched the final, around 1.1 million less than this final.
Did the LoL Worlds meet your expectation?
Ibai Stream Propels Viewership Up
This year Riot also introduced dedicated co-streams with popular content creators for the Worlds Finals. One of the most impactful streams came from Ibai who raked in almost 500,000 viewers during the event, earning him a spot in the top 5 most viewed channels on Twitch on November 5, 2022.
These numbers have also pushed League of Legends to the top of the Twitch leaderboard, with 3.11 million viewers on the site alone. According to esports charts more records were broken as well in terms of language streams with English peaking at 1.6 million viewers, Korean at 1.2 million and Vietnamese at 683,000.
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T1 Was the Most Popular Team at Worlds 2022
When looking at viewership numbers throughout the event it's also clear to see which teams were the most popular. Korean teams dominated the viewership hours, which comes as no shock since all four Korean teams managed to make it through to the knockout round.
Of course, T1 against DRX was the most viewed match of them all, followed by T1 vs. JDG which raked in a peak viewership of 2.2 million. In the top 5 most viewed matches T1's quarterfinal victory over RNG reached 1.6 million viewers.
Overall this World Championship might have started off weak, but the peak viewers were through the roof. Will 2023 be able to top the viewership numbers?