Four biggest community casters made up 25% of League of Legends’ regional leagues viewership in 2024

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Riot Games has been revitalising many of its regional circuits’ viewership with the introduction and support of community casters. These co-casters have brought new waves of viewership to circuits around the globe, but they are more popular in some regions rather than others. Esports Charts has collated some data to take a look at the landscape of regional co-casting in League of Legends before we head off for Worlds 2024.

League of Legends dipped its toes into community casting at Worlds 2022, and the decision was a massive success for the tournament’s viewership. Riot Games have slowly been integrating community casting into their regional events across the past couple of years, and in many regions, these casters have become the most popular broadcasters. 

Earlier this year, the Mid-Season Invitational employed many community casters to boost the event’s viewership, and they made up almost half of the entire tournament’s viewership in 2024: a stark change from how official Riot-Games-affiliated broadcasts dominated viewers’ options before. Understanding how these casters are growing and operating on a regional basis may give us insights as to how they can affect the viewership of the upcoming world championship event, for which these casters will be critically important.

Distribution of co-casting viewership in regional LoL circuits

Starting with the world’s most popular League of Legends circuit, the LCK is actually one of the least-influenced circuits by community casters. Phonics1 of AfreecaTV is the most popular community option for fans to view the esports events, but he makes up only 8.2% of the LCK’s total viewership, far less proportionally than the most popular co-casters for other regions. 

Although the LCK generated proportionally less viewership from co-casters than other regions, the circuit generated more than double the watch time of the next-most-watched region in 2024, meaning co-casters are working against a much larger official broadcast audience. Nevertheless, community casting is still on an upwards trend in Korea, and its share of the LCK’s total watch time increased by 13.7% this year.

The LEC received almost a quarter of its total 2024 watch time from one Spanish creator, ibai. Ibai has a history with European League of Legends, previously working as a caster for the Spanish minor circuit, and now fielding his own team in the LEC, MAD Lions KOI. Ibai still finds the time to support his team through their LEC competitions, and considering they’ve now qualified for the Worlds 2024 Play-In, ibai’s viewership for the Play-In stage this year will likely soar.

The Brazilian CBLoL experienced the most sudden change in viewership this year, introducing community casting for the first time and extending its lead as the third-most-watched region, ahead of the LPL and LCS NA. Brazilian creator Baiano has been massive for the CBLoL’s viewership this year; not only did Baiano make up more than half of the Brazilian league’s viewership, but he was also the most popular co-caster for the LCS NA, contributing millions of Hours Watched to the circuit on the other side of the Americas. 

  Baiano’s past as a professional player makes him an ideal caster for League of Legends   

Baiano is a former professional League of Legends player from Brazil. After retiring in 2019, he moved into content creation and quickly found an audience thanks to how well-known he was by the League of Legends community in his home country. He also established his own esports organization, Ilha das Lendas, which competes in the CBLoL Academy circuit. 

British streamer Caedrel has been known to broadcast many global matches for League of Legends, not only sticking to his local LEC games. The Brit tried to climb through the lower tiers of LoL esports in the mid-2010s, but eventually moved on and began working for the official broadcasts of League of Legends events. After appearing on the desk at many of League of Legends premiere international events across the past few years, he decided to go full-time as a co-caster through his personal Twitch channel for 2024 and also partnered with Fnatic. The Brit has covered everything in League of Legends this year, from the LCS to the LPL. 

The official Fnatic-affiliated streamer was responsible for almost a fifth of the LPL’s viewership in 2024, although many other streamers also contributed to the circuit’s viewership. Unfortunately, we cannot account for viewership coming from Chinese livestreaming platforms, due to the unreliability of statistics reported by these sites, so our LPL viewership here reflects viewership for the league on non-Chinese livestreaming platforms.

Considering how critical many of these streamers were for the total viewership of the regional circuits, let’s see how their viewership compares to the total global viewership achieved by League of Legends esports events in 2024 so far. 

Of the total 368.5M Hours Watched generated by top-tier League of Legends events this year, 25% of this viewership came from only four broadcasters. These popular regional broadcasters are accountable for a quarter of the esports’ viewership so far in 2024, the 1% of the 1%. Riot Games’ decision to accept community broadcasters and integrate them into their esports landscape has been hugely successful in 2024, helping many regions like the CBLoL to set viewership records and reach new heights. 

Baiano is the world’s most popular League of Legends community caster at the moment; the Brazilian creator is accountable for 9% of global League of Legends viewership this year, or 31.89M Hours Watched. Caedrel was more popular than ibai, perhaps surprisingly, but the British caster was also much more active than the Spanish internet celebrity. While ibai did stream the odd game from the LCK on his channel, Caedrel was actively covering the LCK, LCS, LPL, LEC, and more.

Last year’s Worlds 2023 became the most popular esports event ever, after reaching 6.4M concurrent peak viewers. While League of Legends has experienced major success in these past years, Riot Games cannot slow down and rest on their laurels if they wish to continue this growth. The integration of co-casters into the esports scene this year has been crucial for many regional leagues to continue to grow, and this may be the key for League of Legends to reach an even higher peak viewership this year at Worlds.