EMEA Masters Summer 2024 managed to increase its Group Stage watch time with new extended format

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The EMEA Masters Summer 2024 is the fourth edition of the series, and features an expanded format that saw 32 of Europe’s best League of Legends teams from national leagues fight for qualification through the Play-In stage, and 28 prequalified teams await them. The event has continued through its Swiss Group Stage, and the new format has had a distinct effect on the viewership of the tournament. 

The new vast amount of teams competing through the EMEA Masters event has significantly lengthened its duration. For the last Spring 2024 event, groups were live for just under 14 hours in total, whereas the new Summer 2024 structure has seen its Swiss Stage broadcasted for over 41 hours. The lengthy stage has helped the event to reach a higher watch time than other EMEA Masters iterations have managed, but the oversaturation of matches has had a negative effect on the tournament’s average viewership.

The Group Stage of the EMEA Masters event reached 1.2M Hours Watched, which is the most watch time the groups of an EMEA Masters event has reached since Summer 2032. While the new format has allowed for a 22.3% increase in watch time, Average Viewers has fallen by 59% to 29.1K AV.

The falling viewership for the event is the result of an oversaturation of matches featuring teams from small regional audiences, and also the dissipation of French-language viewership for the event series. Previous editions of the EMEA Masters have reached over 100,000 concurrent French viewers during the group stage, but this year, the event only managed 81.9K Peak Viewers in total. 

French-language viewership of these events of course comes in support for Karmine Corp Blue, but at past editions, the participation of Gentle Mates has helped drive the region’s viewership into overdrive. Gentle Mates struggled competitively at the LFL Summer 2024, and ultimately, failed to qualify for the Play-In of this Masters event. 

Both of these teams are supported by content creators affiliated with the organization who co-cast their games, with Karmine Corp’s Kamet0 adding to the viewership of this Summer 2024 event, but Gentle Mates’ Gotaga has had to take a break. In the past, these two French creators have been the most popular broadcasting channels of EMEA Masters tournaments. 

While the EMEA Masters Summer 2024 has suffered from lower French viewership compared to previous events, German streams are staying strong, and Turkish viewers helped to reach the event’s overall PV, as Turkish team Dark Passage faced KC Blue. Although Gotaga and Gentle Mates were not able to boost French viewership higher, many other community casters and official broadcasters received high viewership for the event. 

Karmine Corp’s Kamet0 was the most popular channel of the group stage overall, having received 35.8K Peak Viewers. Although his support of KC Blue has been critical to the event’s viewership, it is still markedly less than at previous events. For the last Spring 2024 event, Kamet0 reached well over 60K PV, with viewership seemingly on a downturn. 

Official French-language broadcaster otplol_ also recorded slightly fewer peak concurrent viewers than last event. Nevertheless, the French broadcaster was still by far the most popular official stream for the groups with 21.7K PV, highlighting even if French viewership is on a downturn, it is still Europe’s most sizeable and passionate League of Legends audience. 

The German broadcast of NNOPrime was also highly successful, with their broadcasts reaching 17.7K Peak Viewers. The channel is the official Twitch channel of German esports organization NNO Prime, who just barely missed out on qualifying to the playoffs. Viewership from this German broadcaster will not be a major source of viewers for the EMEA Masters playoffs, meaning other audiences will need to step up. 

The official broadcast of the DACH-region’s primeleague also brought another 5.5K Peak Viewers to the event. Viewership across regional official broadcasters was largely equal, outside of the outlier of the French-language broadcast. Turkish YouTube Live broadcast LoL TR managed to reach 5.8K Peak Viewers, just about outperforming the official Spanish broadcast with 5.7K PV, the lvpes. 

The other community casters to cover the event were almost insignificant compared to the huge viewership of Kamet0. Interestingly, all of these creators have experience as League of Legends professional players, with Turkish LynxCerezLoL leading the way with 3.47K PV. Spanish creator send0o followed close behind with 3.46K PV, and another Turk, naru, finished our ranking with 3.36K PV.