Faker effect is real — Worlds 2021 set new absolute record for League of Legends on Twitch
The Worlds 2021 semifinals took place last weekend. The miracle that many League of Legends fans had hoped for did not happen: T1 and Faker lost their chances for a fourth world title. However, the team's match against the current world champions from DWG KIA showed record numbers not only within the tournament itself, but also in the discipline as a whole.
Disclaimer: statistics doesn’t include data from Chinese streaming platforms due to its different approach to count viewership activity
T1 in a tense series lost to DWG KIA with a score of 2:3, and the game gained over 3.54M Peak Viewers, thereby updating the tournament's record by the metric. The previous one belonged to the DWG KIA game against MAD Lions in the quarterfinals: compared to this match, the semifinal gained 35% more viewers at peak.
Even though the match did not become a record in the discipline or by individual languages, it still helped the tournament to enter the top 5 most popular esports tournaments ever by Peak Viewers. Only two previous Worlds and two events in mobile disciplines Free Fire and PUBG Mobile had higher numbers.
But the match's most outstanding achievement was that it broke the League of Legends' record for Peak Viewers on Twitch. During the semifinals, more than 2.43M people concurrently watched the League of Legends broadcasts, and more than 92% of the number was attracted thanks to the T1 vs DWG KIA match (2,23M).
Likewise, Worlds 2021 has become the most watched esports tournament on Twitch by Peak Viewers. The closest pursuer (2019 World Championship) had a 23% lower peak audience on the platform.
The second semifinal with Gen.G playing against EDward Gaming caused much less excitement among the audience. At its peak, the match attracted only 1.92M viewers , which is almost half the peak audience of the T1 vs DWG KIA match. According to the metric, the match turned out to be only the eighth most popular in the tournament. The series also ended with a score of 3:2 with the champion of the summer LPL split reaching final.
After semifinals, Worlds 2021 scored more than 158.5M Hours Watched in total. This makes the current World Championship the most watched esports tournament in the world by this metric!
Worlds 2021 has surpassed the previous leader, Worlds 2020, by 12% more Hours Watched. And the event will only improve its statistics after the final, which will take place on November 6.
Chinese and Korean teams will meet in the Worlds final for the second year in a row. The main intrigue of the decisive match: can DWG KIA defend the title? The team has a great chance to repeat the success of T1, who won Worlds in 2015-2016.
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