Our team has summarized the Play-In stage of the main spring event of the League of Legends' worldwide competitive scene. This stage of the Mid-Season Invitational was entered by the members of the former WildCard, who currently participate in a similar qualifier, one which covers the main regions of the discipline.
First, we should note that our statistics have omitted the results coming from the Chinese platforms, just like in the previous articles. On the other hand, we took the Chinese broadcasts on the reliable services (such as Twitch) into account.
The achievements of the Mid-Season Invitational's preliminary phase are quite amazing. These became possible due to several reasons, upon which we will touch later. Average amount of viewers for this event was equal to 314 thousand, whereas the respective peak figure has reached whole 738 thousand. The encounter between Vega Squadron and Phong Vũ Buffalo became the most popular match of the competition.
When comparing the achievements of the last two MSI events, the latter is taking the lead by a wide margin. The difference in average viewership figures may be equal to only 82 thousand viewers – but as for the peak figures, the one from 2018 stays behind its successor by as much as 214 thousand viewers. This should be a subject of pride and joy for both the developers and fans of the game.
We should certainly mention the amazing figures of the Vietnamese broadcast, which has peaked at 374 thousand viewers. To compare, the same figure for the English-language broadcast did not exceed 227 thousand. As for the average number of viewers from Vietnam, it has reached a total of 101 thousand.
In the wake of death of the country's former president, May 3rd and 4th were announced as the official mourning days in Vietnam. Therefore, any attempt of holding an event would be seen as a sign of disrespect on the part of Riot. Additionally, the Vietnamese channel has temporarily stopped broadcasting on the two prior days as well, causing its audience to switch to the English-language YouTube pages – which ultimately played part in reaching the figure of 227 thousand viewers.
At the same time, we would also like to mention the Russian-speaking audience. Unfortunately, the Russian fans relied on one of the Yandex services to establish their official channel, therefore preventing us from getting any real data about their activities.
In the future, we expect an even greater increase in Vietnamese viewers due to the VCS representative entering the main stage of MSI. Along with this, we expect an influx of fans from the major regions (such as LCS). It looks like the League of Legends will break its own broadcast-related records in 2019. Should the current trends continue, the Mid-Season Invitational shall pave the road to success, which will be then reinforced by another international event – Worlds.
