LCS Spring 2023 sees drastic fall in viewership numbers

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The LCS Spring 2023 concluded earlier today with Cloud9 beating Golden Guardians in the Grand Final to emerge triumphant. The League of Legends competition did its lowest numbers since its launch, and one of the reasons for it was the underwhelming performances of popular teams. However, one positive was that it was able to reach a more diverse audience this time around.

  Overall stats from the event   

This LCS Spring 2023 did 271K Peak Viewers, with the peak match coming from the Grand Final that saw C9 win 3:1 and take home $100K. The tournament victor was also the most popular side in terms of AV, even though it was FlyQuest and Golden Guardians who appeared the most times in the top matches list, with three each.

The two finalists also booked their places at the Mid-Season Invitational 2023, to be held in May. It will feature winners from the nine individual spring splits and four runner-ups from LCK, LPL, LEC, and LCS.

Regarding teams popularity, Cloud9 was #1 by average concurrent viewership throughout the event, but it got just barely ahead of its closes pursuer. The list of rosters with the biggest audience also includes one team that didn't even make it to playoffs. 

When talking about how each platform did, Twitch continued to rule the roost, clocking in at 78.2% of the total watch hours. This has more or less been the case for the purple platform over the last three splits, as the share has hovered between the 78-80% marks.

The same is the case with YouTube, which has been eating up between 19% and 22% of the overall watch numbers. However, one area of change, though very minor, is the introduction of a third platform over the last two splits (the other being the LCS Summer 2022), where Afreeca TV have created tiny spaces for themselves, and it remains to be seen if this trend continues at the MSI and the summer split.

There have also been more and more languages claiming a share of the viewership pie over the last two splits. At the LCS Spring 2022, English had a 100% share, while its summer split saw Korean snip in as the only other language with 0.03%.

The recently-concluded competition saw English claim 97.59%, with Spanish, Czech, and French also making entries with minute percentage shares. This is because of the increased number of channels on various platforms broadcasting the event live for audiences around the world.

  Comparing the last three LCS splits   

Among the last three LCS splits, the LCS Spring 2023 had the lowest viewership numbers, doing 14.8M Hours Watched and 109K Average Viewers. This reduction can be attributed to the fact that big sides like TSM, Team Liquid, Immortals, and Dignitas failed to make it past the Group Stage, finishing in the bottom four in the standings.

The MSI 2023 will begin on May 2 and run till May 21, and all the qualified teams will bring their A-game considering the bragging rights and prize money — yet to be disclosed — at stake. With the LoL season off to a flyer, officials and fans will hope this mega event continues this momentum into the second half of the year.