League of Legends summer season results: league trends and most popular teams

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All of the League of Legends regional leagues have recently ended, and these events determined all the 2022 World Championship participants. The Esports Charts team sums up the overall results of the summer season and shows the changes in the viewership of the leagues over the past years.

Most Popular Teams of the Summer Season

T1 became the leader by the number of viewers at matches, the team's matches were watched by 409K Average Viewers. Two other LCK representatives — Gen.G (299K) and DAMWON Gaming (279K) — are also in the Top 3.

Teams from LEC take places from 4 to 8 in the rankings: G2 Esports, Fnatic, Rogue, MAD Lions and Excel Esports. The first three have about the same number of AV at the games, about 260K-270K people. The other LEC teams are behind by several tens of thousands of viewers.

Overall, the Top does not have any surprises. T1 is the most popular team in the discipline with the most impressive list of titles. Everything is also clear with other teams: DAMWON Gaming won 2020 World Championship and reached the finals of 2021 World Championship. As for Gen.G, it has been very successful throughout 2022, finishing second in LCK Spring 2022 and winning LCK Summer 2022.

Europe also has no surprises, with G2 Esports, Fnatic and Rogue being the teams that have played the most LEC finals. They are the most popular and highest performing teams in the region.

Trends of The Regions in Viewership

Viewership Dynamics

You can see in the chart that before Spring Split 2019, LCK showed restrained growth, but in Spring 2020, the AV number doubled from 121K to 233K people. We have to remember that LCK Spring 2022 was the last split when the league had Promotion games, when the teams with the poor result in Division I could swap places with the best teams in Division II. It all had a big impact on interest in the league. Starting from LCK Summer 2020 season, the league switched to a closed franchise format.

The CBLOL league in Brazil has a similar situation. In 2020, it switched from a Promotion system to a closed franchise format, which led to an increase in AV. It reached 175.6K Peak Viewers at CBLOL Summer 2020. Since then, the AV number has gradually declined, albeit only slightly.

The LEC and LCS charts should be considered together, as these leagues have a very large audience overlap. If you look at the splits in 2017 / 2019, you can see that both leagues had identical trends. Starting from 2019, the number of European league’s viewers (after rebranding from EU LCS to LEC) has begun to grow, while LCS viewership has begun to gradually decline. What caused this to happen? One reason is the failure of LCS teams at world tournaments, while LEC representatives showed good results there. Basically, the audience was drawn to the more successful league. Another factor in the decline of interest in LCS is the large number of legionaries. The situation has reached the point where some teams do not have a single player from North America: the same issue is observed in another American franchise tournament, Overwatch League.

A steep decline is also observed in the Vietnamese VCS league: between 2020 and 2022, the league's AV number has dropped from 73K to 20K. The reason for this is the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent restrictions on leaving the country. Because of the severe lockdown, the top VCS teams missed several world tournaments (MSI и Worlds), and Summer Slit 2021 was canceled as a result.

The crazy leap can be seen in the LPL chart. In late 2019/early 2020, the Chinese league began to see dramatic growth in AV. This was influenced by two key factors: growth in the number of regional broadcasts, and the good results of Chinese teams on international arena, including 2020 World Championship being hosted in Shanghai. The latter tournament was backed by a big advertising campaign that attracted not only new players, but also fans.

Pandemic Factor

Some League of Legends fans believe that the number of viewers in the leagues increased in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. People have started to spend more time watching esports and having interactive leisure time, as regular leisure time was temporarily unavailable due to quarantine and lockdown. The charts of many leagues prove this theory, but their vectors differ afterwards. In 2022, the pandemic situation greatly improved and people began to return to their usual lifestyles (and familiar leisure activities). This supposedly explains the decrease in the number of viewers, but this situation is not observed in all leagues. 

If you look at the charts, you can see that LEC, LCS, CBLOL and a number of smaller leagues do tend to have a declining audience at a time when the active phase of the pandemic is over. However, in addition to this, you need to remember about changes in audience preferences: leagues are losing competition to streamers and other esports tournaments: in particular, the LoL audience actively follows Valorant, another Riot Games game (as we found out with the example of LCS and LEC).

At the same time, in LCK and LPL the number of viewers is gradually increasing. It seems to be a combination of factors: the high level of competition in LCK and an incredible season from T1 in Spring Split 2022, the results of Chinese teams in the latest MSI and Worlds. Because of all of the above, the leagues were able to retain an audience even when the coronavirus receded. The other leagues could not do so.

Records

Several leagues have reached new viewership records by languages in 2022. Among these are:

• LCK: 

  • English streams — 471.1K concurrent viewers;

  • Spanish streams — 7.1K;

• LEC: 

  • Korean streams — 12.6K;

• LPL: 

  • Korean streams — 55.5K;

  • French streams — 30K;

  • Portuguese streams — 23K.

AfreecaTV also set several records by concurrent viewership in several leagues. And the new LPL record is definitely a highlight here.

• LPL record — 54.5K concurrent viewers;

• LEC record — 17K;

• LCS record — 3.8K;

• LJL record — 3.3K.

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Soon, the best teams of the League of Legends regional leagues will play in 2022 World Championship. Matches take place from September 29 to November 5. The tournament prize pool amounts to $2.2 million.