LCS Summer 2023 Week 1 watch time is down 26% despite more matches
The League of Legends summer season has begun, and the LCS Summer 2023, the LEC Summer 2023, and the CBLOL Split 2 2023 have all reached the end of their first weeks of play. So far, the stats look alarming for all three regions, with North America standing out with the biggest drop in Average Viewers.
LCS
Out of the three leagues, the LCS Summer 2023 has shown the biggest decrease in viewership. Compared to the first week of the spring season, the Average Viewers number has dropped by 47%, and the Peak Viewers number has decreased by 40%. The most popular match of the first week of the LCS Summer 2023 was between Team Liquid and 100 Thieves.
Due to the sharp decrease in Average Viewers, the LCS Summer 2023 also saw a decrease in total Hours Watched. This happened despite the fact that the matches in the first week had almost 40% more Airtime than in the previous split (10 matches in the spring, and 15 matches in the summer during week 1).
In May, the American league LCS was at the center of a scandal, and there was a real threat that the summer split would be canceled altogether. Shortly before the start of the LCS Summer 2023, the league's player association presented a list of demands to Riot Games regarding the NACL format. Players asked for better support for academy teams, contracts guaranteed at the LCS player level, and a promotional system between the leagues. Riot Games rejected these proposals, after which esports players announced a boycott. As a result, the league's start was urgently postponed for two weeks, and Riot Games was ready to cancel the LCS summer season completely if the parties did not come to an agreement. In that case, American teams risked missing the World Championship.
CBLOL
The situation in the Brazilian league CBLOL Split 2 2023 is similar — compared to Split 1, all metrics of the first week have seriously declined. The Average Viewers number has dropped by 27%, and the Peak Viewers number has decreased by almost 15%. The CBLOL Split 2 2023 has also shown the biggest drop in Hours Watched among all three leagues — this metric has decreased by 35% in the first week. Speaking of the most popular match, the game between paiN Gaming and LOUD has attracted the largest audience.
LEC
All metrics have also declined for the LEC Summer 2023, but not as significantly as in the North American and Brazilian leagues. The Average Viewers number in the first week was almost 174K, which is 17% fewer than in the first week of the spring season. At the same time, the Peak Viewers number and Airtime metrics have remained almost unchanged. The most popular match of the first week of LEC Summer 2023 among viewers was between MAD Lions and KOI.
Participants in the summer splits will compete for quotas for the 2023 World Championship — the year's final tournament to be held from October 10 to November 19 in South Korea. The event will be hosted by the cities of Busan and Seoul. We should remind you that last year's World Championship became the most popular tournament in the history of the discipline, attracting more than 5.1 million Peak Viewers.
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