Icons Global Championship 2022 — reasons behind the disappointing start of the inaugural LoL: Wild Rift world championship
On June 14, the final tournament of the first LoL:Wild Rift esports season began. The opening game day was marked by successful performance of teams from Southeast Asia and China, while Brazilian spectators showed high activity. However, the event turned out to be much less popular compared to competitors: Esports Charts breaks down how the largest tournament in the discipline started.
At the beginning of the year, Riot Games presented the first professional season of Wild Rift esports, which lasted from February 26 to March 27. The ecosystem of the pro scene consists of 8 regional leagues, including Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America; those in turn consist of local leagues. There are many famous multi-gaming organizations represented in the discipline, such as Royal Never Give Up, T1 and Cloud9.
24 teams are taking part in the current world championship taking place in Singapore: 8 qualified for the tournament from regional leagues, and another 16 will fight for places in the group stage in the Play-In. The total prize pool of the tournament is $2 million. The venue of the event, Suntec Convention and Exhibition Center, is a familiar arena for Wild Rift fans, as the exhibition center has already hosted the Wild Rift Horizon Cup in 2021, the first major tournament in the discipline.
On the first day of the Play-In Stage, two bo3 series were held in groups B and C, the teams from Southeast Asia Rex Regum Qeon and T1, as well as the Chinese teams JD Gaming and J Team won.
Viewership statistics
During the first day of the broadcast, Icons Global Championship 2022 gathered 232K Hours Watched throughout 6 hours of airtime. The maximum concurrent viewership on broadcast reached 52K concurrent viewers during the match between the RRQ team and Japanese team Unsold Stuff Gaming.
Portuguese-speaking streams stood out among the other broadcasts: they attracted 15K Peak Viewers. Brazilian Wild Rift fans watched the debut of compatriots from Keyd Stars on the international LAN.
It should be reminded that the top tournaments on other popular mobile MOBAs are also being held at the same time with Wild Rift. For example, MLBB Southeast Asia Cup 2022 matches attract ten times more viewers on average. In addition, a major AoV league (Arena of Glory Spring 2022), which ended in May, gathered 6 times more Peak Viewers, and the average online was consistently twice as high as on the first day of the Icons Global Championship 2022.
The low figures of Icons is primarily caused by the unsuccessful approach of Riot Games to the promotion of the esports series. The company has made a bet on Twitch, which is far from being the most popular streaming platform for mobile esports fans. Even Twitch Drops failed to significantly improve the viewership statistics. In addition, there are not so many Wild Rift content creators on Twitch.
In addition, the Arena of Valor International Championship 2022 started today, which also shows significantly higher audience figures than Icons. In short, Riot Games have to make a lot of effort in the nearest future to look competitive against the background of their colleagues in the market.
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You can follow the statistics and results of Icons Global Championship 2022 on the tournament page.
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