Worlds 2022 Shows a Significant Drop in Viewers Compared to Last Year
The League of Legends Group Stage 2022 just finished, and we got to see Korea and China dominate once again. For the first time since 2016, Worlds is hosted in North America, and even though this is good news for North American fans, the viewership numbers seem to be taking a toll.
Today, we will see the first match in the Worlds 2022 Knockout Stage, JD Gaming vs. Europe's last hope, Rogue. But before we turn our heads to the next stage, we need to take a look back.
Viewership Numbers Drop for All Major Metrics in Group Stage
All these numbers are from Esports Charts, and as we can see, the Group Stage viewership decreased massively by 40% compared to last year's League of Legends World Championship.
In this year's Group Stage, the Worlds 2022 Championship accumulated over 46.5 million Hours Watched, and the Average Viewers number was 826K.
The most-watched game during the Worlds 2022 Group Stage reached 1.39 million concurrent viewers and was between Fnatic and T1, Europe's third seed and Korea's second seed, on Day 2.
All these numbers might sound impressive by themselves, but if we compare them to last year, we can see that all the significant metrics from this year's Group Stage have dropped considerably, by 37-41%.
T1 Most Popular Team in Group Stage
The Korean superteam T1 is already known for its massive fanbase. The actual size of their fanbase shone through once again in the Worlds 20022 Group Stage, as T1 had the highest Average Viewers, with their Group Stage average being a million viewers.
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The T1 fans also managed to affect the Average Viewership of the teams sharing the same group as T1, as according to EsportsCharts, only teams from Group A made it to the top of the Average Viewership leaderboard.
Viewership Loss Due to Problematic Time Zones
Looking closer at the various streaming services offered across the different Languages for Worlds 2022, we can only see a 5 % drop in Average Viewers for the English stream. In contrast, the Korean and Portuguese streams dropped by 63% and 42%.
The leading cause for the significant loss of viewers this year is primarily because of the time zones that come with having the event in North America.
Both European and Asian viewers are experiencing the Worlds 2022 schedule as very hard to follow.
For European viewers, the Worlds matches play through the middle of the night, whereas for Asian viewers, Worlds begins early in the morning.
As we move on to the Knockout Stage, we expect to have a rise in average viewers as we are closing up to the finish line, and Bo5 is usually seen as more exciting.
Who is your favorite team going into the Worlds 2022 Knockout Stage?
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