Europe regional leagues are the second biggest tier of competition in the League of Legends competitive scene on the old continent, with only LEC being above all the regional leagues that exist in Europe.
However, in the past few years, we have seen massive growth in terms of viewership in these regional leagues, with some even rivaling some Major regions, such as Brazil and North America. This is due to the level of play which year after year rises in quality and in the addition of teams such as KOI, Team Heretics, Karmine Corp, which brought huge fan bases to the leagues they compete in.
So it begs the question. Which regional league is actually the biggest of them all?
League of Legends regional leagues viewership stats on Summer
The LFL and LVP are by far the biggest regional leagues in Europe and that comes as no surprise for those who follow the League of Legends scene closely. With names such as Rekkles, Czekolad, Crownie, Cody Sun, and other players who already have been in the LEC or even the LCS, together with some brands like Karmine Corp, or KOI in the LVP, it's easy to see why these two leagues dominate the European regional leagues when it comes to viewership but also competition since four of the last five European Masters winners come from the LFL.
However, there are other leagues that are also capable of pulling some very good viewership numbers. The Prime League Spring Split had an Average Viewers of 12K, and a Peak Viewers of 45K, and when it comes to Hours Watched they had 1.6 million, putting them clearly as the third biggest league in Europe.
While the top three saw some massive decline in all the viewership metrics from Spring, apart from the LVP which maintained almost the same number of Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers they had in the Spring Split. The smaller leagues saw a big increase in viewership in general, especially the Ultraliga and the PG Nationals.
The PG Nationals numbers skyrocket, with their Average Viewers going from 1K to 4K, and their Peak Viewers more than doubling, from 5K to 12K. It proves that the league is becoming more attractive, and is doing a good job to bring in new viewers.
Ultraliga Peak Viewers also increased massively, from 9K in the Spring to 20K in the Summer, with AGO Rogue being involved in both most popular matches, and showing they are clearly one of the fan favorites in Poland.
Another league that saw an increase in both metrics was Hitpoint Masters. It saw its biggest increase in PV, going from 4.7K PV to 8.5K PV. Its number of HW also went up, as the league had 75K more Hours Watched than in Spring.
The number of Hours Watched also increased for these two leagues, and if they can keep this trajectory, the Prime League will have some competition for the spot as the third biggest regional league in Europe next year.
Unfortunately for the EBL league, they weren't able to follow the trend set by Ultraliga, PG Nationals, and even LPLOL which saw their number increase even if just a little. The Balkans league saw their Hours Watched decrease from 135K, to 99K, not even reaching the 100K mark. The LPLOL was their biggest rival, and while they managed to improve their numbers in the Summer Split, the EBL didn't manage to make itself attractive for League enthusiastic to watch their competition.
LoL regional leagues viewership dynamics compared to Spring splits
Despite the dominance of the LVP and LFL, you can see that in Spring both leagues achieved much better viewership, especially the LFL. The LFL had 8.9 million Hours Watched, 282k Peak Viewers, and an Average Viewership of 68K. Much better numbers if compared to the ones the league had in the Summer Split.
The remaining leagues show similar numbers among themselves when it comes to the Spring Split. If it's obvious that the LFL and LVP saw their viewership decline, it's also noticeable that in the Summer Split the smaller leagues had an increase in viewership. In the Spring, Ultraliga Season 7 had 584K Hours Watched, which is actually a decent number, but their average was 4K which is not amazing when compared to the top three leagues in the region. Compare that to their number in Summer and you can see the league had better numbers.
Leagues such as the LPLOL, EBL, and PG Nationals, had almost the same Hours Watched, with all having around 150K Hours Watched, and regarding the Average Viewers, all of them are also very close, all of them averaging 1K in the Spring.
GLL despite not being even close to the numbers of the big three is able to reach a bigger audience. The numbers of 248K Hours Watched, 11K Peak Viewers, and 3K Hours Watched in the Spring, are actually impressive for such a small league, that normally also doesn't find a lot of success at European Masters.
These numbers tell a good story. The gap between the top three leagues, although still gigantic, is slowly decreasing, and the smaller leagues seem to be growing more and more, which is great for the competitive League of Legends ecosystem in Europe.
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