First Stand 2025: Forecasting viewership with current teams and the ideal contenders
We are almost one-third of the way through the League of Legends esports season, which will conclude next week with a major new international tournament, First Stand. This event brings together the top teams from regional competitions across the Americas, Europe, Korea, China, and the Asia-Pacific region. As the first tournament of its kind, the Esports Charts team is diving into predictions on how many viewers it might attract.
Which teams qualified for First Stand?
When predicting viewership, we always begin by assessing the popularity of the teams competing. So, who made it to First Stand?
Regional LoL leagues have already thrown plenty of curveballs. In Korea, the tournament favorite (and also the region’s most popular team) was eliminated in the first round of playoffs. Meanwhile, last season’s top Chinese team failed to even crack the top three in its regional competition.
In Korea, Hanwha Life Esports emerged victorious at the LCK Cup 2025. The team had already turned heads late last season with a heroic Summer Split victory that secured them a Worlds spot. They reached the playoffs but fell to Bilibili Gaming, the eventual finalists. This year, history repeated itself: Hanwha Life once again knocked out reigning world champions T1 in the playoffs before battling past Gen.G, one of Korea’s most consistent teams, in a hard-fought 3:2 final.
Meanwhile, in the Americas, where the U.S., Brazil, and Latin America now compete within a single ecosystem, North American teams unsurprisingly dominated the competition, maintaining a clear edge over their southern rivals. Team Liquid and 100 Thieves stood out during the Winter Split, setting up a high-stakes showdown at the Cross-Conference stage. There, Sean "Yeon" Sung's squad delivered a statement victory, crushing 100T in a clean 3:0 sweep.
In the Asia-Pacific region (LCP), teams from Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, and Australia now compete together from the group stage onward, rather than only meeting in the playoffs as they did in previous years. While the rivalry between Taiwan and Vietnam is expected to intensify over time, for now, Taiwan continues to dominate the league. The Grand Final once again saw the region’s biggest rivals, CTBC Flying Oyster and TALON, face off. In 2023-2024, TALON had a stranglehold on the competition, but they slipped this time, allowing CTBC to claim their first title since 2022.
Over in China’s LPL, Top Esports delivered a stunning championship run. Battling through the lower bracket, they took down nearly every tournament favorite on the way to the Grand Final. There, they overcame a tough challenge from Anyone’s Legend to secure their first trophy since 2021.
Europe arguably saw the most intense and electrifying competition of the season. With the highest level of play in years, four top contenders fought for the LEC's championship: long-time league powerhouses G2 Esports and Fnatic, alongside rising challengers KOI and Karmine Corp. In the end, it was KC, the fan favorites in France, who claimed the title. For the first time in their history (having previously only competed in the pan-European EMEA Masters), they will now take the international stage to face teams from outside Europe.
In the end, First Stand didn’t feature any complete underdogs, and most of the qualified teams already have solid fan followings. However, the lineup could have been even stronger to maximize the event’s potential reach, at least on paper.
Which teams would have been more beneficial for First Stand’s viewership?
The reality is that, of the five regions, only Europe is sending a “perfect” audience-friendly team to First Stand. Karmine Corp boasts a massive fanbase, particularly in France, and while the team’s viewership is on par with G2 Esports, KC edged out their rivals in the 2025 Winter Split. This boost was largely due to extensive co-casting by their owner and biggest supporter, Kamel “Kameto” Kebir. It’s safe to say he’ll be covering their matches at FS too, ensuring a full house for every game.
The most noticeable audience gap is in Korea. Unsurprisingly, the most popular team here is T1, especially following their back-to-back World Championship titles. Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok’s team remains the primary viewership force in the LCK and LoL in general, with an average audience more than twice the size of Hanwha Life Esports’. While we can expect somewhat lower engagement from the Korean audience at First Stand, the drop likely won’t be as drastic: locals tend to support all their teams.
The situation in America wasn't that far from the ideal, but for First Stand’s overall numbers, it would have been much more beneficial if a Brazilian team had secured a spot, especially the local powerhouse, LOUD. Brazilian fans make up a huge part of the LoL audience, but their engagement peaks exclusively during matches featuring their own teams. While First Stand will likely lose a significant chunk of Brazilian fans, there will still be teams for Americans to cheer for, helping to somewhat make up for that loss.
The LPL will have the least impact on the overall viewership of First Stand (since, as a reminder, we don't include data from Chinese streaming platforms). A slightly better scenario for the tournament would have been Invictus Gaming qualifying: while the team hasn't had major successes in League of Legends for a while, non-Chinese audiences still follow them with a little more interest than other teams. It seems that the memories of their 2018-2019 achievements are still fresh in fans’ hearts.
The situation with the LCP representative is similar to that of America. The best-case scenario for the tournament would have been GAM Esports qualifying, as they are the most successful and popular team from Vietnam in recent years. Over the past few years, the Vietnamese audience has been a major factor in League of Legends continuing to break viewership records across the industry.
So, what kind of viewership can we expect from First Stand?
While it’s too soon to predict peak concurrent viewership, we’ll revisit that closer to the playoffs. However, we can already estimate the total watch time the tournament could accumulate.
Taking into account the tournament format, the popularity of the qualifying teams, and the overall audience growth seen in international championships compared to regional ones, we estimate that First Stand will likely accumulate between 40 million and 52 million hours of watch time. This would be slightly less than the viewership recorded during last year’s Mid-Season Invitational playoffs.
What if the "ideal" teams had qualified for the tournament? We could expect a considerable boost in viewership. Based on our calculations, the total watch time would’ve likely increased by over 46%. As a result, the event could’ve potentially accumulated between 59 million and 76 million Hours Watched, even more than last year’s MSI playoffs.
We’ll know how everything unfolds very soon! The event kicks off next Monday, March 10th. Be sure to check out our viewer’s guide for all the essential details about the tournament.
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