CBLOL Academy set a new series viewership record with help of Baiano
CBLOL Academy is the Brazilian Academy League of Legends circuit, allowing up-and-coming players to showcase their skills through the tier-2 scene in an attempt to climb to the region’s premiere competition. Brazil has been a bastion of esports viewership for years, but recently their League of Legends scene has been growing and becoming one of the country’s favourite esports titles. Most recently, the CBLOL Academy Split 2 2024 set a new viewership record, becoming Brazil’s most popular second-tier event for the game.
While titles like Counter-Strike and Valorant have seen Portuguese-language viewership drop slightly this year, Brazilian viewership for League of Legends is only continuing to grow and find its place. This is especially important for League of Legends, as more established regions such as North America are seeing considerable drops in viewership, and smaller growing regions like Brazil and Vietnam help the esports title to maintain its global viewership.
In total, the recent CBLOL Academy Split 2 2024 event reached 3.46M Hours Watched across the entire split. Viewership for the CBLOL Academy in past years hasn’t been especially high, but this year’s Split 2 was different, as Brazilian Twitch streamer and former LoL professional Baiano was heavily supporting the viewership for this event.
Baiano founded his own League of Legends team last year, Ilha das Lendas. It’s no coincidence the team appears in four of the Split’s top 5 most popular matches, and his community casting support of the league has been crucial for its viewership. The team which was founded in 2023 attempted to qualify for both splits of the CBLOL Academy this year, but they finally qualified for Split 2 after winning the Split 2 qualifiers.
Ultimately, Baiano’s team fell against Keyd Stars Academy in the lower bracket semifinal of the playoffs, and ended the Split in 4th place. Keyd Stars Academy managed to advance to the grand finals against paiN Gaming Academy, where Keyd Stars Academy won the Split with a 3-2 victory. This grand final was the most popular match of the event, and it received 114.8K Peak Viewers for the best-of-five match, which went all the way.
Both Keyd Stars Academy and paiN Gaming Academy have now advanced to the Americas Challengers 2024 event. This event is dissimilar to the Challengers events found in Valorant, as the League of Legends tournament will not decide which teams advance to the premiere tier-1 circuit next year.
Looking towards the most popular channels of the tournament, Baiano’s influence on the tournament's viewership is clear as day. The Brazilian streamer multicasted his coverage of the event to both his Twitch and YouTube Live accounts, and his two accounts were both the most popular and most-watched channels for the event.
The official CBLOL YouTube Live account also received significant viewership, and the event was also covered by more than 10 other community casters, although these streamers were not nearly as popular as Baiano.
Ultimately, the CBLOL Academy’s popularity does not exist in a bubble. Compared to other regional League of Legends circuits around the globe, the Brazilian academy league was more popular this year than many other premiere regional circuits.
The Brazilian academy circuit outperformed the LLA Closing 2024 event in terms of peak concurrent viewers. The LLA is the premiere Latin American circuit for League of Legends, and even this premiere event spanning many Latin American countries could not match the viewership of the Brazilian tier-2 event. For 2024, the LLA will be replaced by the new pan-Americas circuit Riot Games is planning, hoping to combine the viewership for both North and South America.
Read also: LLA Closing 2024 marks the lowest audience viewership in league history
The CBLOL Academy also outperformed many of Europe’s premiere regional circuits, excluding the French league, which received 135.5K PV for its Summer 2024 event thanks to ample support from community casters. Nevertheless, the Brazilian event reached a higher peak viewership than both Spain’s Superliga Summer 2024 and the DACH region’s Die Techniker Prime League Summer 2024.
The Brazilian CBLOL Academy circuit will likely continue to match this high viewership in the future. Baiano’s team Ilha das Lendas achieved a respectable fourth place in their first CBLOL Academy appearance, but they will likely be returning for next year’s events to try and find their way into the top-level competition for their legion. Keep an eye on the Brazilian academy league with Esports Charts statistics, it may be one of the most popular circuits for League of Legends in 2025.
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