The 2021 League of Legends Summer Championship is heading to its conclusion, with the world’s top League of Legends teams fighting within their regional premier leagues to earn a spot in the highest LoL competition — the 2021 League of Legends World Championship.
Before jumping into playoffs, each of the regional leagues featured several weeks of group stage matches, all of which were broadcasted to their dedicated communities all around the world. Esports Charts regularly collects viewership statistics of each of the official premier LoL leagues and compares them with each other to determine which region’s audience is more devoted when it comes to LoL esports.
This article reviews viewership statistics of the regular season of League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) and League of Legends Pro League (LPL) 2021 Summer splits.
Disclaimer: Viewership statistics used for the purpose of this article don’t include data from Chinese streaming platforms.
South Korean league statistics
The group stage broadcasts of the South Korean summer split attracted by far the highest volume of spectators, outperforming not only LPL but also LEC and LCS.
The LCK Summer 2021 regular season matches generated over 50M Hours Watched, which is more than double the LEC’s numbers. On average, 183K viewers tuned in to watch the competition.
The highest peak of 720.3K concurrent viewers was reached on the third day of the tournament during the match between T1 and DWG KIA. This was a much-anticipated matchup, given that T1 had just returned into action after a two-month-long break, while DWG KIA remained in action all along at Mid Season Invitational 2021 in Reykjavík, Island. The last time the two teams had faced each other was during week 6 of the LCK Spring 2021 group stages when DWG KIA upset T1 2-1. Their first summer matchup ended up with a similar result.
However, T1 managed to reverse-sweep DWG KIA in their second matchup during week 6, which also turned out to be the second-highest peak of LCK Summer 2021 with 559.6K Peak Viewers.
The third matchup with the highest number of concurrent viewers was the T1 vs. Afreeca Freecs match, which peaked at 531.8K concurrent viewers.
T1 can be considered the most popular team of the LCK 2021 Summer split, as they participated in 8 out of 9 matches with the highest viewer count.
Chinese league statistics
The viewership statistics of the Chinese league showed to be the lowest out of the four major LoL premier leagues, although the real numbers that include the data from Chinese streaming platforms are probably much higher.
The regular season of the LPL Summer 2021 generated a total of 9.8M Hours Watched. The competition was spectated by 31K Average Viewers.
The highest peak of 162K concurrent viewers came in week 7 during the match between FunPlus Phoenix and Suning Gaming. The battle ended up with FunPlus Phoenix defeating Suning Gaming as they continued their ongoing win streak. Out of 16 group stage matches, FunPlus Phoenix lost only three.
The second highest peak was reached during the Rare Atom vs. Suning Gaming match in the last week of the regular season, which attracted over 143.4K Peak Viewers. Closing the top 3 most-spectated matches of the LPL 2021 summer split group stages, the Suning Gaming vs. Royal Never Give Up match peaked at 118.9K concurrent viewers.
In total, 7 out of 9 matches with the highest viewer count featured Suning Gaming, making them the most popular team of the LPL Summer 2021 regular season.
Viewership dynamics
Compared to the previous Spring 2021 season, neither of the leagues have shown substantial pivots during the Summer split. There have been only minor changes in the viewership dynamics, with LPL showing a slight growth and LCK showing a slight decline.
Because the playoff stage of neither of the competitions has concluded yet, we took into account viewership results of the spring and summer split group stages week by week.
The results show the gradual growth of LPL’s audience starting in week 4. On average, the highest weekly peak increased by 41.4%, while the amount of weekly Average Viewers increased by 3.78%.
The South Korean league managed to surpass the previous season’s numbers in weeks 6 and 7, but that wasn’t enough to reverse the negative viewership trend. Compared to LCK Spring 2021, the highest weekly peak during the LCK Summer 2021 regular season went down on average by 6.86%. When it comes to the Average Viewers count, the amount of weekly AV decreased on average by 15.17%.
Despite the recent slight decrease, the presented viewership statistics clearly show that League of Legends esports is currently the most popular in South Korea. In fact, the South Korean audience alone spent more hours watching the summer split than European and North American audiences combined.
Naturally, the viewership of each of the respective leagues will expectedly keep rising as the competition gets closer to its finale — the Worlds 2021.
For the second consecutive year, the event will be held in China. Unlike the previous edition, however, this year’s championship will feature a multi-city tour, with each tournament stage taking place in a different Chinese city, namely Shanghai, Qingdao, Wuhan, Chengdu and Shenzhen. The 2021 Worlds Final is set to take place on November 6th in the Universiade Sports Centre in Shenzhen.
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