2025 marked a year of major changes for the professional League of Legends scene, with national leagues in EMEA Masters particularly feeling the impact. Following the tier-1 leagues, these now also include Winter Splits, which differ significantly in format (and sometimes even in the composition of participants) from the traditional spring-summer segments of the season. In this article, we'll cover the remarkable success of NLC, the accomplishments of new tournament organizers, and the competition and outcomes in the smaller leagues.
NLC
At the start of 2025, NLC Winter 2025 unexpectedly became the top national league, even outperforming some franchise leagues by Peak Viewers. In just one season, NLC went from a small, local tournament to a hyped league with big media background. Now, it features popular streamers, community casters, and former pro players who didn’t find a spot in the LEC. This year, the league welcomed a new team, Los Ratones, founded by Marc "Caedrel" Lamont, one of the most well-known English-speaking community casters in League of Legends.
While the average number of viewers at league matches was around 4,000, during NLC Winter 2025, that number now jumped to 47,200, more than a 10-fold increase. Other NLC stats also saw big improvements: the league reached over 4,100,000 HW time and a peak of 360,545 concurrent viewers, record-breaking numbers for the series.
The most watched national LoL championships of the Winter 2025 Season
LFL and Superliga
LFL Winter 2025 secured second place in viewership among the EMEA Masters leagues. During the winter season, the French league garnered over 2,700,000 Hours Watched, with a peak of 111,156 concurrent viewers. Karmine Corp Blue emerged as the champions, defeating Ici Japon Corp. Esport 3-1 in the final. As we noted in another article, LFL has been struggling since Karmine Corp's main roster moved to the LEC. The French league is now left with the academy team Karmine Corp Blue, but the community casting by co-owner Kamel "Kameto" Kebir no longer brings in the same level of viewers. New big teams like Gentle Mates and Joblife, owned by popular streamers, have joined LFL recenty, but their community casting doesn’t have the same significant impact like Kameto's broadcasts.
Read also: LFL vs. LVP: European leagues' successes and failures in the winter season 2025
The Spanish LVP Superliga also had a disappointing winter season. Compared to Summer 2024, the league's peak viewership fell by 58%. The decline in LVP Superliga’s statistics is largely due to similar reasons as the LFL’s, the league experienced a boost in popularity during KOI’s rise, but once Ibai ‘’Ibai’’ Llanos team moved to the LEC, the league’s viewership started to slowly fade.
The top team in LVP Superliga Winter 2025 was Los Heretics — Team Heretics' academy took home the title for the third consecutive time. It's unfortunate that co-owner David "TheGrefg" Cánovas no longer streams his teams' League of Legends matches. His broadcasts could have made a substantial impact on the overall viewership stats.
TCL
As for the TCL, the Turkish league seems to be slowly recovering. In 2023, TCL experienced a decline in viewership after lost its World Championship spots. In 2024, the league faced another setback when access to Twitch was restricted in the country, which directly impacted its viewership. However, TCL appears to be making a comeback, thanks to streams on Kick and community casting from streamers like Ahmet ‘’Jahrein’’ Sonuç and Ferit "wtcN" Karakaya.
During this winter season, the Turkish league reached 2,130,000 HW and 86,318 PV, a significant improvement over the Summer 2024 figures. The growth is driven by both community casting and the drama within the league. For the past three seasons, Papara SuperMassive has been the TCL champion, but each win was hard-earned. Two of the three grand finals were won after a reverse comeback — losing 0-2 but finishing the series 3-2. An exciting, tense final is the best way to grow viewership.
The most popular national LoL championships of the Winter 2025 Season
Rift Legends
In 2025, a new series called Rift Legends was launched. This league replaced Ultraliga, which had previously featured players from Eastern Europe (mainly from Poland). In 2024, Polsat Games, the company behind Ultraliga, chose not to renew their agreement with Riot Games, resulting in the series' closure. As a result, the GAM3RS_X and renowned Polish streamer Damian "Nervarien" Ziaja launched and taking on the role of organizing and producing Rift Legends, the new national league for region.
Rift Legends Winter 2025 experienced a massive surge in viewership, skyrocketing by more than ten times compared to the final season of Ultraliga. A key factor in this growth was the community casting led by Nervarien. The league also became much more accessible to independent streamers, with the number of unique channels growing fourfold. As a result, Rift Legends Winter 2025 even outpaced LVP Superliga in terms of viewership, a feat that Polish fans had never even imagined before.
Prime League
The Prime League went through a major overhaul ahead of the winter season, with several well-known clubs, each with years of experience on the European League of Legends pro scene, leaving the league. Starting in 2025, fans will no longer see teams like FC Schalke 04, SK Gaming Prime, MOUZ, and NNO Prime.
The departure of several top clubs had an immediate impact on Prime League's viewership. Compared to the previous season peak viewership fell by 29%. The numbers would likely have been even lower if it weren't for community casting by German streamers Frederik ‘’NoWay’’ Hinteregger and Maximilian ‘’HandOfBlood’’ Knabe. Although they only streamed a few hours of league matches, it was enough to top the charts for both peak viewership and average audience. It's interesting that the grand final between BIG and E WIE EINFACH didn’t even crack the top 5 most popular matches of the season.
Prime League Studio
Greek League of Legends
The Greek League of Legends scene also went through a major reset ahead of the new season. Similar to the Polish league, 2025 saw a change in tournament operators — CowboyTV took over from PVP MEDIA. With this change, the league was rebranded, shifting from the Greek Legends League to the Hellenic Legends League.
Following the rebranding, HLL Winter 2025 accumulated 119,000 HW and 7,825 PV. While peak viewership increased by 46% compared to the previous season. The peak came on the very first day when a few League of Legends streamers from Vietnam unexpectedly tuned in to broadcast the Hellenic Legends League matches. The reason for their stream is unclear, as there are no players from Vietnam or even Southeast Asia in the league. These Vietnamese casters streamed the opening day’s matches, but after that, none of them continued with HLL broadcasts.
Hitpoint Masters
The Czech Hitpoint Masters Winter 2025 reached 87,100 hours of watch time, with a peak of 3,529 viewers. In the final match, NightBirds defeated eSuba 3-0. However, the most-popular game wasn't the grand final, but the clash between Entropiq and eSuba.A in the first round of the Swiss Stage. As two of the most well-known esports organizations in the Czech Republic, it’s no surprise that their match drew the largest crowd for the local League of Legends league. On top of that, excitement around the playoffs has been underwhelming as the games were rather one-sided: 6 out of 8 series ended in dominant 3:0 sweeps.
Arabian League
The broadcasts of Arabian League Winter 2025 accumulated nearly 64,000 hours of watch time, with a peak of 2,898 viewers. This is a bit lower than the numbers from Arabian League Summer 2024, and there are several reasons for this. Competition in the league has steadily faded: in the past, Twisted Minds, Nigma Galaxy, and Geekay Esports fought for the championship, but that rivalry is now over. Twisted Minds missed the winter season due to a player shortage, while Nigma Galaxy had a poor transfer season, going from being a favorite to a league outsider (finishing last in the winter season). Now, Geekay Esports has virtually no competition in the region: they claimed yet another championship title, finishing Arabian League Winter 2025 season with a 22:1 map record (no losses in the playoffs).
LoL Italian Tournament
The LoL Italian Tournament is one of those national leagues that doesn’t often make headlines, as it’s a smaller league with a limited audience. Still, the LoL Italian Tournament Winter 2025 showed some progress compared to the previous season, both peak and average viewership saw a slight increase. This growth came primarily from the league’s official channel, since community casters are hardly involved in its coverage.
The champion of LIT 2025 Winter was Macko Esports, one of the top teams in the region. Last year, they won the LoL Italian Tournament Summer 2024 and also reached the final of the LoL Italian Tournament Spring 2024.
LPLOL
LPLOL Winter 2025 accumulated 32,000 HW, and compared to Summer 2024, it saw a slight increase in peak viewership (+6%). The winter season champion was Flame Hard, who defeated GTZ Esports 3-0 in the grand final. What's particularly impressive is that Flame Hard didn’t lose a single map to any opponent throughout the entire winter season. Interestingly, Flame Hard didn’t even make it into the top 5 most popular teams of the season based on average viewers per match, and the grand final only ranked 10th in the list of the most-popular matches.
Road of Legends
Road of Legends is another tournament series that debuted in 2025 following a change in tournament operators. It replaced the Elite Series, which had been the home for teams from the Benelux countries for several years. At the end of 2024, the Elite Series was shut down after its tournament operator, Unlocked, ended its agreement with Riot Games. Now, the region's main league is Road of Legends, which is organized by GameWaves.
The matches of Road of Legends Winter 2025 accumulated nearly 18,300 HW, with a peak of 2,191 concurrent viewers. The champion was ZennIT, who won the deciding match 3-2 against mCon esports. This marked ZennIT's first-ever national league victory in the club's history. Before this, the team had never finished higher than third place in the Elite Series leagues.
Esports Balkan League
During the winter season, Esports Balkan League garnered just 21,600 HW, with a peak of 1,920 concurrent viewers. The peak viewership dropped by 33%: this is mainly because most of the league’s viewers tune in for the matches between Partizan Esports and Crvena zvezda (the rivalry between two Serbian sport clubs that transitioned from football to esports), but in Winter 2025, these teams never faced off against each other.
The top teams from national leagues will compete in the EMEA Masters Winter 2025 tournament, set to run from March 17 to 23.
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