The 2024 World Championship is soon approaching playoffs, and the League of Legends yearly event broke its swiss stage records, setting itself up for success in the knockout stage. The event’s massive audiences were kept entertained throughout the first two stages, with many different corners of the globe represented on the international stage. Esports Charts has collected viewership data to provide some insights as to which audiences are reaching peak excitement, how and when.
The record-setting results were powered by highly popular regional teams, as well as exciting match-ups featuring the top teams of each region. In some cases, high viewership for teams represents their strong competitive nature, which draws attention from attentive esports fans, but many teams earned millions of viewers by being their region’s top representative, regardless of results.
Worlds 2024 Group Stage Most Popular Teams
T1 were the most popular team throughout Worlds 2024’s group stage, maintaining 2.11M Average Viewers per game. The highly popular Korean roster did not easily qualify for Worlds this year, having just about qualified through the LCK Regional Final. Despite looking weaker than other Korean teams in attendance, T1 remains immensely popular, and their loyal fans cheer them on no matter the results.
T1 managed to qualify for playoffs at Worlds 2024 with a 3-1 scoreline after recovering from a first-game loss. The team qualified in the same place as Korean peer Hanwha Life Esports, and behind Gen.G, who finished the group stage with a flawless 3-0 record and received 1.76M Average Viewers. Korean teams were generally highly popular at Worlds 2024 as strong competitive teams, but T1’s years of fame gave them the edge over their rivals.
G2 Esports were the second most popular team in the group stage, but the forerunning European representative was sent home after finishing the stage with a 2-3 record. The top-seeded team from the LEC finished the third round of the stage 2-1, but then lost two games in a row against T1 and Bilibili Gaming. Despite our viewership statistics not including Chinese livestreaming platforms, Bilibili Gaming ranked highly thanks to its matches against popular squads T1 and G2 Esports, as well as the team’s strong competitive potential.
Except for G2 Esports, all other North American and European teams ranked below teams from Brazil, Vietnam, and the Pacific region. The tides have been shifting in regional League of Legends viewership for a while, and these three regions have now grown to become far more sizeable than North America. Riot Games’ new proposed regional circuits for the Americas will hopefully help the North American market to recover in 2025.
While many teams enjoyed the fruits of their regional popularity, other moments were distinctly popular among a wider spread of esports fans. For this, we look towards our Twitch Chat viewership data, which can organically build a view of which moments fans found most exciting.
Worlds 2024 Most Exiciting Moments Before Playoffs
At the peak of chatter excitement, the draw for the second day of matches during the Swiss Stage saw 44.4K Peak Messages recorded. The final moment of the first day was keenly watched by serious fans as they awaited their team’s next match-up, but some production mistakes came under the spotlight and fans were not quiet in their criticism. While drawing teams by picking balls from a bowl, some of the selected draws came up without a team affiliation, meaning another ball had to be picked. Fans vocally criticised what a simple mistake this was for such a serious event, driving Twitch Chats ablaze with traffic.
Turning away from the match draw mishap, G2 Esports’ elimination at the hand of Bilibili Gaming was the most popular moment of gameplay during the group stage. The European squad managed to take Bilibili to the final third map, but the Chinese team looked dominant in the final map, and G2 Esports was sent home. For the playoffs stage, the lack of a European team could impact viewership, but this has not held the series back in the past.
Taking up the next two places, T1’s popularity is clear as day. Bilibili Gaming and G2 Esports both made a second appearance here, but a large portion of international fans are most interested in T1. Twitch is not as ubiquitous with Korean esports fans as it is with North America and European ones, but T1 was nevertheless one of the most exciting teams for fans this year.
Aside from T1’s raw popularity, paiN Gaming’s final match of the play-in stage against Rainbow7 was also a contentious moment for fans from Latin America. PaiN Gaming faced Latin American competitor Rainbow7 in one of the final decider matches of the play-in stage, meaning only one team could advance. Brazil’s audience for League of Legends has been growing at a rapid pace recently, and the Latin American scene is smaller but still passionate: the combination of these audiences cheering for either paiN Gaming or Rainbow7 drove Twitch Chats to 31.3K Peak Messages. While these audiences cannot match the raw size of the Korean one, they are clearly passionate and involved fans of League of Legends esports.
Worlds 2024 continues with its first playoffs matches on October 17. Weibo Gaming will first face LNG Esports, and T1’s match against Top Esports Gaming on October 19 will likely be hugely popular. Keep up to date with the upcoming matches with our Schedule page, and track viewership statistics live on the tournament page.
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