LCS Summer 2022 results — Cloud9 victory over one of the league's worst viewership stats
The last League of Legends summer split to end was LCS Summer 2022. It had one of the worst viewership statistics in the North American league in several years, and we'll take a closer look at the results in our new article.
Tournament Results
Cloud9 became LCS Summer 2022 champion, crushing 100 Thieves in the Grand Final, 3:0. The winning team made it to the title match through the playoffs upper bracket, defeating Counter Logic Gaming along with Evil Geniuses and 100 Thieves, the champion and vice-champion of the Spring Split. It is interesting that C9 did not look that confident in the group stage, finishing only in fifth place. Thus, North America will be represented at Worlds 2022 by Cloud9, 100 Thieves, and Evil Geniuses, with EG starting in the Play-In instead of the group stage.
Several Cloud9 players have achieved significant personal records. For example, this is the first LCS title in the career of the jungle player Berserker, who left the Korean league to join C9 earlier this spring. The middle-lane player Jensen broke the curse of runner-up spots, and Zven, a support player, now can boast the LCS championship in two different roles (he was previously the team's bottom-lane player).
LCS Summer 2022 Viewership Results
LCS Summer 2022 broadcasts totaled more than 19 million Hours Watched in 165 hours of airtime. The event had the Peak Viewers number of nearly 370.2K and the Average Viewers number of 115.5K. The most popular match of the Summer Split is the Grand Final between Cloud9 and 100 Thieves.
Evil Geniuses did not make it to the final match, but still became the most watched team of the event. Its games accounted for 32% of LCS Summer 2022 total Hours Watched. 100 Thieves became the most popular team of the championship, its matches were watched by 153K Average Viewers. EG, Cloud9, Team Liquid and TSM also rank in the Top 5 according to this metric.
As mentioned above, LCS Summer 2022's viewership numbers ended up being some of the worst in the league in the past few years. The tournament ranked only 12th among the most popular LCS events and barely made it into the Top 5 among 2022 summer splits.
Most popular LCS Summer Splits
LCS Summer 2022 lagged more than 47% of HW behind the leader among summer events, LCS Summer 2020, but outpaced last year's summer split by fewer than 2% of HW. It is also worth noting that the tournament lagged behind this year's Spring Split by more than 4% of HW. LCS Summer 2022 has ranked sixth by Average Viewers. It is behind LCS Summer 2020 by 78% of HW, and behind last year's Summer Split by more than 8% of HW.
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The LCS Summer 2022 audience was nearly half as large as the LEC Summer 2022 had. We can say that the Grand Final of the tournament was short of many European and Asian viewers due to taking place on Monday night, according to local time.
Another factor that affected the statistics is the end of the pandemic. People stopped spending as much time watching the streams as before. However, the LCS Summer 2022 statistics proved to be comparable to last year's Summer Split: this shows that while the league's audience has essentially hit rock bottom, it probably won't fall any further. At least, one would like to believe so, because many LoL fans noted how LCS has improved in terms of broadcast production.
