LJL Summer 2023 sets new peak viewership record as DetonatioN FocusMe maintains unparalleled regional dominance

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The LJL Summer 2023 was held from June 10 to August 20 as an online/offline event (the finals took place at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan), with DetonatioN FocusMe emerging as the victor. It also set a record for being the most popular event and the fifth most watched one in the series, etching itself in the history books as one of its most successful competitions.

In a pulsating Grand Final match-up, DetonatioN FocusMe sneaked past Fukuoka HAWKS gaming 3-2 to take home the trophy. Thus, the winner took home almost $68.8K and booked a place in the 2023 World Championship, with the total prize purse being $71.7K.

  Essential stats and the five most popular matches from the LJL Summer 2023   

The LJL Summer 2023 ended up hitting 87.8K Peak Viewers during the summit clash, where DetonatioN FocusMe and Fukuoka HAWKS gaming traded four maps over the first four rounds before the former finally sealed the deal in a decider that lasted around 38 minutes. These two sides were by far the most popular, making the top five list four times each, with their three meetings across this League of Legends competition hogging the podium.

Interestingly, two of these five most popular matches came from the Group Stage, including the first clash between the eventual finalists. The tournament also did 2.1M Hours Watched and 17K Average Viewers over 129 hours of airtime.

As seen from the most popular matches table, there were only two sides that were ever going to be in the top two most popular teams leaderboard. Interestingly, an organization that was knocked out at the Lower Bracket Round 1 stage of the Playoffs was third, showing the kind of support it enjoys at home.

  Most successful streamers at the LJL Summer 2023   

Before the LJL Summer 2023 started, organizer Riot Games revealed that after four years, it would have an offline Grand Final emanating from Chiba’s Makuhari Messe convention center. This meant that fans and streamers were much more interested in proceedings than usual as there would be a live crowd after so long, which showed in the peak concurrent viewership numbers, as the match did 95.6% better than the next most popular game at the tournament.

A big part of this record was fps_shaka, the most popular individual channel that attracted nearly 30K PV. The official Riot Games Japan Twitch channel also saw fans flocking to it, helping it almost double its stats from the Finals of the previous split, which was also the case with the official account on YouTube.

The competition saw most of the viewers catch the action on Twitch, which has been the dominant site for the game in this region for a while. However, over the last three splits, one site’s share has slowly been rising steadily thanks to the increasing fame of its content creators and the resultant rise in the number of LoL channels in the Japanese streaming scene, so it remains to be seen how it platform does at the Worlds.

  Looking at the most popular events from the LoL Japan League   

When comparing the most popular tournaments in the series, the LJL Summer 2023 comes out on top by 14.9% over the next best entry, the LJL Spring 2022. Perhaps the fact that the finalists had formed a mini rivalry within this tournament and were meeting for the third time, with the title on the line, attracted a lot more viewers who wanted to see if Fukuoka HAWKS gaming would be able to finally get one over DetonatioN FocusMe or if the latter would continue on its merry ways to yet another title.

Moreover, the performance of Fukuoka HAWKS gaming, whose parent company owns the highly followed Japanese professional baseball team of the same name, also helped attract more viewers. The competition also ended as the fifth most-watched in the LoL Japan League, with the leader being the LJL Spring 2023, which also benefitted from a change in the format compared to the two splits held in 2022.

The 2023 League of Legends World Championship is slowly taking shape, with 12 of the 22 participants decided so far. This highly-coveted event will be held at multiple venues across South Korea (Seoul and Busan), and with a massive prize pool expected, it will be intriguing to see the final lineup of rosters and how each of them performs come October/November.