EMEA Masters Spring 2024 reinforces series' dependency on star teams

Loading

The EMEA Masters Spring 2024, the third edition of an event that pits the best teams from the spring season EMEA circuit against each other, concluded on April 28. Despite a strong start in the Group Stage, it could not maintain that momentum throughout, finishing with middling numbers due to the early eliminations of a few highly followed teams.

At the end of two weeks of action, Eintracht Spandau eased past Beşiktaş Esports 3:1 in the Grand Final to emerge as the champion. It was undoubtedly a surprising final match, especially with the presence of the Turkish side, who have, at best, had average results over the past few years. The winner took home around $21,400, while the runner-up became richer by about $13,300 from this $80,000 prize pool tournament.

  EMEA Masters Spring 2024 — viewership stats and most popular matches   

The EMEA Masters Spring 2024 recorded 152.9K Peak Viewers, 3.4M Hours Watched, and 61K Average Viewers over an airtime of 56 hours. It peaked during the summit clash, where Eintracht Spandau completed an almost spotless run (just one loss in the Group Stage) to emerge as the split's best cross-continental team at the Tier-2 stage of LoL esports.

One point that sticks out from the list of most popular matches is that two of them came from the pool stage. Both of Karmine Corp Blue's matches against SK Gaming Prime made the top five, helped by their statuses as their countries' most renowned esports organizations in the discipline.

The French side, owned by France's streaming megastar Kamet0, tends to attract a legion of fans whenever it is in action, which was what helped the Group Stage do so well. However, its early elimination, a 3:2 loss to Geekay Esports in the Quarterfinals of the Knockout Stage (the second most popular match at this competition), saw a lot of viewers from its nation lose interest in the latter games.

The Group Stage exit of Gentle Mates, co-owned by another popular French content creator Gotaga, also did not help issues. He usually covers all matches of the team, adding to the audience numbers, as seen at the LFL Spring 2024, where he was second only to Kamet0 in terms of peak viewership. However, his decision to skip the Playoffs after his team was sent home affected the viewership dynamics.

These trends were also seen in the way language dynamics shaped up at this League of Legends tournament, with French and German seeing big increases in their watch times. Turkish was the big loser in this regard despite seeing a representative make the Grand Final at the last two Spring splits, with Istanbul Wildcats' incredible comeback victory last year being headline-worthy news that attracted a lot more attention from back home.

English and Spanish also saw significant decreases this year, with the latter's representatives not performing well and missing the likes of Team Heretics and KOI. Both these organizations moved to the franchise league, LEC, last year, with the academy team needing help to garner the same kind of attention.

  LoL European Masters – comparing the popularity of the last three events   

Compared to the previous spring edition, this event was much more successful in terms of viewership numbers. However, it has to be noted that the 2023 iteration did not have community casting available, which is a major factor in the European league showing its poorest results since 2019-2020.

When looking at the overall European/EMEA Masters series, this competition ends as the sixth most popular and eighth most watched. These figures aren't exactly eye-catching, but they have ensured that this still nascent league (post the merger of the three League of Legends regions) remains stable. The Group Stage numbers also show that with the right circumstances and performances, the audience reach can be higher.

  LoL European/EMEA Masters – most popular competitions in the series   

The EMEA tournament, like its predecessor, remains a league at the mercy of the performance of a few teams. The French sides' early elimination this time was a big factor in the numbers not being higher than what they could have been, but the summer split offers another chance for prominent names to fire and help make it a success.