LCS Spring 2024 continues downward viewership trend for North American League of Legends
The LCS Spring 2024 split concluded its playoffs on the night of March 31. The split concluded with Team Liquid taking home first, and FlyQuest finishing second: both teams therefore qualified for the Mid-Season Invitational. The League Championship Series has been struggling to retain its franchised teams across past years, with TSM most recently selling their spot in the 2024 season, and Golden Guardians and Evil Geniuses exiting the franchise entirely. Amid these losses, the league continues to receive far lower viewership than other large-scale regional circuits.
Alongside the European LEC and Korean LCK, the LCS has historically been one of League of Legends’ major regional circuits. However, the North American region has been progressively losing viewership and attention since 2020. With news of teams selling their spots and other teams opting for a straight buy-out, the league has been struggling to grow. Every year since 2020 has marked a downturn in viewership, and 2024 continues this trend.
As it stands, the LCS in 2024 has received fewer viewers than the Brazilian CBLOL, which received 280.8K PV for its CBLOL Split 1 2024. If current trends continue, the LFL, France’s second-tier circuit for League of Legends, will outperform the LCS in the upcoming years. The LFL reached its highest viewership yet, with 234.1K PV recorded for the LFL Spring 2024. If the LFL can maintain this high viewership and the LCS continues to lose viewership, second-tier French games will receive more viewers than North America’s premiere League of Legends circuit.
LCS Spring 2024 Viewership Statistics
The LCS Spring 2024 achieved 10.76M Hours Watched and reached its peak viewership of 246.2K PV for its grand final between FlyQuest and Team Liquid. FlyQuest finished LCS Summer 2023 in 9th place, but came to 2024 with a brand-new European-majority roster. The team was highly competitive, finishing the group stage in tied first place with a 10-4 record, but failed to beat Team Liquid in the grand final.
Both Team Liquid and FlyQuest have now qualified for the Mid-Season Invitational 2024, their first chance to taste the international competition for the year. The winner of the event directly qualifies to this year’s world championship tournament, but 12 total teams from around the globe all compete towards this one goal.
The lower bracket final match between Cloud9 and Team Liquid was also quite popular, drawing 230.8K PV.. Cloud9 has been rather dominant in the LCS across the past two years, and their defeat against Team Liquid was characteristic of a shakeup in the region's standings.
Shopify Rebellion’s match against Cloud9 in Week 2 was the most popular of all group stage matches, receiving 192.8K PV. Shopify Rebellion acquired TSM’s franchised spot in the league last year, along with their roster. The organisation has made strides to make it their own, replacing three of their players with Korean import Bvoy, and North Americans FakeGod, Zeyzal, and Tomio, the latter joining as a substitute player.
The North American organisation’s entrance to the LCS has been lukewarm, and the roster finished the Spring split in 7th of eight places. However, the viewership for their match against Cloud9 shows there is a potential audience of LCS fans ready to support the team.
Since 2021, viewership has been steadily declining for the LCS. The League has managed to slow the decline slightly; 2024 marked the lowest drop in viewership since 2021, losing only roughly 25K peak viewers compared to the previous year
The viewership of the recent LCS Spring 2024 split does not bode well for North American League of Legends fans. However, North America's struggles to bring League of Legends esports to life is not mirrored on the global stage. Brazil continues to grow and develop its league, France’s regional circuit is showing better viewership than ever before, and some Southeast Asian demographics reached new records for viewership at last year’s world championship.
Many of the world’s regional circuits for League of Legends have not yet concluded. However, a glance at the preliminary ranking of the most popular tournaments reveals that the LCS currently sits in a tenuous 4th place. The LFL is still ongoing, but will struggle to outperform the LCS now that Gentle Mates have exited the playoffs stage in third place.
The LCS continues to combat its decline in viewership, but Spring 2024 was not the split to finally turnaround the year-long decline. Next month brings the Mid-Season Invitational in Chengdu, China, and if the North American teams are competitive enough to compete with their international rivals, maybe this is the boost North American League of Legends needs.
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