First Stand 2025: China-Korea showdown dominates Day 1 viewership
First Stand 2025 marks the debut of Riot Games’ new international tournament. As the first cross-regional event of the 2025 League of Legends esports season, it features one team from each major region. The opening day saw Europe and the Americas clash, as well as the slightly more popular battle between Korea and China: in total, viewership fell just below 700,000 concurrent viewers for this exciting new event.
Korea’s Hanwha Life Esports kicked off their tournament run with a matchup against China’s Top Esports, which the Korean team was able to swiftly dispatch. In theory, Karmine Corp’s game against Team Liquid should have been the more exciting game, going to the third and final map of the best-of-three. However, the timing of the match likely affected its viewership.
With the EMEA and Americas battle beginning early in the morning for European fans, and in the middle of the night for Americans, the match’s viewership potential was limited. Nevertheless, French-speaking fans were proud to support Karmine Corp, almost matching the size of the international English-speaking viewership for the day. As we covered in our prediction piece, Karmine Corp was the ideal team to qualify from EMEA for First Stand’s viewership, and strong results from this roster could bring significant traffic from French-speaking viewers.
Read also: First Stand 2025: Forecasting viewership with current teams and the ideal contenders
With the inaugural First Stand being held at the LoL Park in Seoul, South Korea, the event schedule will be less than optimal for European and especially American fans. Nevertheless, the opening day of the First Stand 2025 marked it as one of the most popular League of Legends events of 2025 so far, and it still has many more exciting matches to go.
The Round Robin stage of the First Stand runs until March 14, with the top four teams advancing to the Knockout Stage. Held this weekend and culminating on March 16, the grand finals of the event is likely to be one of the most highly-watched League of Legends matches of 2025.
Across the week, we’ll be keeping an eye on the viewership performance of the First Stand 2025. The match between Karmine Corp and Hanhwa Life Esports on March 13 could very well be the most popular game of the groups and is definitely worth keeping an eye on. 1,000,000 peak concurrent viewers is easily within the grasp of the First Stand 2025, and at this point, it’s only a matter of time.
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