LCS continues downward trend, additional community casting doesn’t help
The first gaming week of LCS Spring 2024 has concluded in North America. Despite changes in the broadcast format and streams from the popular Brazilian community caster Baiano, LCS continues to lose its audience. Esports Charts summarizes the results of the first week of the spring split.
LCS Spring 2024 season follows a new format, with eight teams participating in the regional league instead of ten. Two teams, Golden Guardians and Evil Geniuses, exited the league after last year's summer split. Along with them, Team SoloMid also left the franchise, selling its slot to Shopify Rebellion. The LCS offseason turned out to be very eventful in terms of roster reshuffling. Only NRG, Team Liquid, and SR (ex-TSM) managed to retain the cores of their rosters. The other five teams nearly completely refreshed their lineups.
LCS made other adjustments too, aimed at increasing viewer interest and engagement. Group stage matches now take place on weekends, rather than Thursdays and Fridays as in the spring of 2023. Additionally, all matches are now played on the current game patch available to regular users. Moreover, the games themselves start slightly earlier, and organizers have halved the breaks between them.
Cloud9 and FlyQuest were the strongest teams after the first week, winning two out of two matches each. On the other hand, Immortals and Shopify Rebellion had a rough start and currently occupy the two bottom spots in the table with a 0-2 record.
LCS Spring 2024 Viewership Statistics
If we compare it to last year's spring season, a significant drop in viewership hours is noticeable (-28%). The major factor behind it is that the league has reduced the number of teams, resulting in fewer matches and less airtime.
The first week of LCS Spring 2024 surpassed the previous season only in peak viewership (+7%). However, this progress can be considered somewhat accidental.
The matches of Week 1 were covered by the popular Brazilian streamer Baiano, who has now become an interregional community caster. Baiano primarily broadcasted matches from the domestic CBLOL league, and as they ended, he switched to LCS games: and the majority of his viewers were not particularly interested in LCS.
Watching North American teams' games on Baiano's channel remained at 20-30K Peak Viewers. This situation occurred on January 21st — when switching from one region to another, Brazilian viewers lingered a bit on Baiano's broadcast. As a result, by the time the match between Cloud9 and 100 Thieves began on his channel, there were 63.3K Peak Viewers (though this number was reduced to 28K PV by the end of the match). It is thanks to this lag that LCS Spring 2024 was able to achieve a good peak online viewership.
The introduction of community casting by Baiano has not halted the audience decline for the league. However, the situation might still change if more co-casters join in covering LCS.
The viewership numbers for LCS broadcasts have been decreasing for several years now, and it's not the only struggle of the league: almost all league participants had to abandon academy teams, and some clubs even left the franchise. All this led to LCS teams struggling to achieve good results in international tournaments. The league certainly needed significant changes; some of them were implemented before the start of the spring season, but it seems insufficient at the moment.
Currently, LCS lags significantly behind other franchise leagues in audience reach, and it's unlikely that this situation will change anytime soon. At the end of the first week of the spring season, North America is trailing behind even Brazilian CBLOL.
Statistics for Week 1 in regional leagues in 2024:
| League
|
Hours Watched
|
Peak Viewers
|
Average Viewers
|
|---|---|---|---|
| LCK
|
8 625 563
|
1 113 067
|
326 520
|
| LEC
|
7 425 749
|
741 450
|
406 890
|
| CBLOL
|
1 969 514
|
246 560
|
157 561
|
| LCS
|
1 067 834
|
191 540
|
114 411
|
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