Why are official broadcasts for Worlds 2023 featuring so few Authorized Viewers?

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Recently, the Streams Charts Twitch Stats Chrome extension has been getting a lot of attention. Our extension offers many different stats, metrics, and features to enjoy, but the key one that is grabbing people’s attention is the Authorized Viewers to All Viewers Ratio.

An Authorized Viewer is an individual who is logged into Twitch and watching the stream directly on the platform, and by comparing the ratio of these users to all users we get the all-important ratio. This ratio is key in highlighting illegitimate broadcasters who are inflating their viewership statistics through various means: such as embeds on high-traffic sites or view-botting. 

Fans of League of Legends who have been following the recent Worlds 2023 event, may have noticed one odd feature of the broadcasts. Community casters of the event have been receiving much higher Authorized Viewers to All Viewers ratios when compared to the official broadcasts of the event. Does this mean that the official broadcasts from Riot Games are view-botting? Not exactly.

  Authorized to all viewers ratio of Top-5 most watched community casters of Worlds 2023 Play-In  

Firstly, let’s take a look at the figures for the most-watched community casters covering Worlds 2023. Ibai, caedrel, and baiano are the current most-watched community casters of the event and these three streamers feature an 81.5%, 84.5%, and 79.3% Average Authorized Viewers Ratio. These streamers are actually on the lower end of AUV for community casters of Worlds 2023, as the overall average for all non-official broadcasts is 99.7%.

Compare these figures to the official riotgames broadcast on Twitch, which features an AUV ratio of 53.8%. The LLA official Twitch account featured the lowest AUV among all official channels analysed: 20.5%. Averaged across all official broadcasts of Worlds 2023, the AUV for the event is 50.7%; the official broadcasts’ AUV ratio is 49% lower than the non-official broadcasts. 

  Authorized to all viewers ratio of official channels during Worlds 2023 Play-In  

What’s the cause of this drastic difference between the two types of broadcasts for Worlds 2023? Official broadcasts of the event feature Drops, in-game icons and emotes that players can earn by watching official broadcasts of the event. Drops generally affect the AUV ratio but in the opposite direction. 

Drops cause users to pause the stream broadcast but stay on the page, allowing them to earn Drops without actually watching the broadcast. This means the user is counted as an Authorized User, but not as a viewer of the stream. This is one of the reasons why Twitch streams featuring Drops sometimes have an AUV ratio of >100%. 

The key reason why the AUV ratios of official broadcasts are so low is that Riot Games is directing its users to LoLEsports.com instead of Twitch. The official website for League of Legends esports hosts the official Twitch broadcasts on their site as embedded content, leading to viewers for the Twitch stream, but not Authorized Viewers. This is why the official broadcasts for Worlds 2023 feature such low AUV ratios, not due to view-botting or anything similar. If you’re curious about the Authorized Viewers to All Viewers Ratio, you can read more about how this metric works in our Streams Charts article.

Worlds 2023 itself shows quite impressive numbers in terms of viewership metrics and so far everything is going to the point that the championship will again update at least some viewership records. Event statistics (including live viewership of matches) are available in the report, and all materials about the tournament can be read here.