Substantial changes to the LEC format are mirrored by a rapidly changing live-streaming domain
Coming into 2023, the LEC revamped its format with a new emphasis on more games, longer matches, and expanded the league to include the Middle East and Africa. At a glance, the new format helped the league to extend its watch time and host more exciting matches for fans to enjoy, but how did the new format affect the league exactly?
The new League of Legends EMEA Championship introduced a third split into its schedule. The championship series now includes a Winter Split and a new Groups stage for teams to battle through before advancing to Playoffs. To top all of this off, the LEC now also hosts a Season Finals, something that the league hasn’t seen since 2019.
2023 was not only a year for new changes to the league’s format, but also a year for new teams to enter the fray and hopefully bring new fans, viewership, and audiences along with them. With so much changing for the circuit in 2023, the series seems almost revitalised. In this piece, we will examine how all of these changes came together to affect the league’s viewership and fan experience.
How new teams affected the LEC 2023
Two new teams joined the LEC for the 2023 season: Team Heretics and KOI. KOI are not truly a new team, but rather a new organisation joining the league. KOI are an esports organisation founded by content creator Ibai Llanos and football player Gerard Piqué. Ibai, a former LVP caster, is one of the biggest content creators in the world and the third-most-followed Twitch channel as of this moment. KOI entered the LEC for the 2023 season by picking up the former Rogue roster.
Team Heretics is also an esports organisation founded by a Spanish YouTuber, this time Jorge “Goorgo” Orejudo. Team Heretics is also supported by one of the biggest names in Spanish-speaking live-streaming: TheGrefg, who is a co-owner and public figure for the organisation. Entering the 2023 season, they picked up players from various teams, like G2 Esports and Misfits Gaming, and set off into the LEC. With both of these teams being represented by Spanish esports organisations and content creators, hopes were high for Spanish viewership to explode this year.
Looking at the Average Viewers figure for both new teams in the LEC 2023 and the teams they replaced, the metric remains stable for both teams. Although it seems viewership did not increase for the new teams according to this graphic, there are other factors involved. Firstly, neither KOI nor Team Heretics were able to qualify for the LEC Finals event, which stopped them from achieving their full viewership potential.
The LEC Finals 2023 event was the second-most-watched event of the circuit, according to Average Viewers, and both KOI and Team Heretics missed out on boosting their AV metric by competing there. Average Viewers also dropped by 7% on average comparing 2023 to 2022, so KOI’s 2.8% fewer AV than Rogue is not proof of low viewership for the team specifically. Also important to note, Rogue were one of the best teams of the LEC 2022 season. They finished second in the Spring playoffs, won the Summer playoffs, and finished second in the Championship Points just behind G2 Esports. Their constant high performance and Grand Finals appearances make it hard for KOI to compete with them, but ibai managed it.
In fact, these two teams did have a profound effect on the league’s Spanish-speaking viewership, and it helped to elevate the league above the decay of viewership it had experienced in past years. As we looked at in our article after the LEC Finals 2023, the LEC experienced a 7.5% growth in watch time compared to 2022. To be exact, the league’s viewership grew by just over 5M hours of watch time compared to the previous year.
Analysing the dynamics of the language statistics for the LEC, Spanish experienced the largest amount of growth in 2023. The dynamics show 4.8M more Hours Watched than last year, although other languages experienced a larger growth in terms of watch time expressed as a percentage compared to 2022. English, one of the only languages to receive more viewership than Spanish, actually saw a 1.19M hours dip in watch time: a 2.9% decrease.
With all this in mind, Spanish viewership’s increase of 4.8M HW makes up over 96% of the league’s growth for this year. Of these 4.8M HW, 84% of these hours came directly from ibai himself, who returned to League of Legends as a community caster. Ibai was previously an LVP caster and after building himself a massive following he returned to League of Legends casting the MSI event. Now, he streams the LEC games to support his own team.
In our previous article covering the LEC 2023, we discussed how the increase in broadcasting time and matches helped the league garner the watch time it needed to grow, so on top of ibai’s massive viewership how did the new format directly help the league increase viewership?
Effects of the new format on viewership
As mentioned, the LEC 2023 introduced a brand new Winter Split, Groups stages to bridge the gap between the regular Split and Playoffs, and a Season Finals. The effects of these changes are twofold: fans have more games to spectate and advertisers have more chances to be exposed to the large LEC audience.
Of course, increasing watch time isn’t as simple as broadcasting for longer throughout the season. Although the LEC increased their broadcasting time by over 40 hours throughout the season, viewership did not climb proportionally. The extra Split and Finals event diluted the viewership of the preexisting Splits, leading to Summer and Spring Splits that appear low in viewership compared to 2022.
Comparing the Summer and Spring Splits of 2022 and 2023 directly against each other is inadvisable. The LEC has traditionally received lower viewership as the season progresses, with the Summer Split historically receiving fewer Average Viewers and Hours Watched than the Spring Split. Now with the edition of a brand-new Split to kick off the year, the dynamics of the LEC season have changed to become something brand-new.
As the Winter Split kicked off this year’s season, the Spring Split 2023 received the short end of the stick. Comparing the two kick-off Splits for each year, Winter 2023 received slightly more AV than Spring 2022, although statistically insignificant. The Average Viewers metric then proceeded to fall as the 2023 season progressed, but as mentioned this is expected from the LEC.
A key factor in terms of the league’s stakes and hype was the new Season Finals. The LEC Finals 2023 moved the goalposts for the league, as the Season Finals hosted the chances for teams to qualify for Worlds 2023. In previous years, the top-performing teams at the Summer Playoffs event would earn a chance to compete at Worlds, but now teams will have to wait until the Season Finals for this.
This had a direct effect on the Peak Viewers metric for the league, as the Summer, Spring, and Winter Splits of 2023 received the lowest peak concurrent viewers figures in over three years. The Summer 2023 event received 343.5K Peak Viewers, whereas in 2022 it received 737.5K and over 1M in 2020. The Finals 2023 hosted the new Worlds qualification matches, and this event received 654.9K PV, although less than the peaks of last year this was more than the other Splits in 2023 achieved. Despite all these factors affecting the viewership of the LEC in 2023, Hours Watched did increase comparing 2023 to 2022.
Hours Watched is directly calculated with Average Viewers and Airtime, so we should expect to see HW climb as Airtiime increases. The LEC 2023 was live for 15.6% longer than its predecessor, but only experienced a growth of 7.6% in terms of Hours Watched. By extending their season by another 40 hours, it could be possible that the LEC started to burn out some fans, leading to Hours Watched stagnating slightly as Airtime continued to climb.
Although this may worry fans of the discipline who wish to see the esports scene grow and prosper, for advertisers at the event, how the LEC increased its watch time may be irrelevant. The LEC’s new format directly led to more broadcasting time and longer watch time than the previous year, which may be the most important fact for advertisers looking to collaborate with the league. More watch time means more exposure to fans and more chances to showcase your product and brand name, does it matter how exactly the league achieved this?
With the major effects of the new format and teams out of the way, there are still some interesting dynamics remaining to cover.
Language Dynamics for LEC 2023
Spanish and English are two languages for which we’ve already covered the dynamics, but other languages experienced radical dynamics too comparing the 2023 season to the previous one. Spanish received 4.8M more HW than last year, at a rate of 71% growth. However, Greek and Czech were the fastest-growing channels, receiving 112.3% and 99% more watch time than last year, respectively.
These two languages had regional broadcasters to thank for their large growth, as the Czechian Hitpoint organisation were entirely responsible for Czech-language growth, and the brand-new Gamers Longue LEC coverage was the source of Greek viewership.
Gamers Lounge is a digital channel focusing on the gaming and esports market. With a modern production studio, they offer a high-quality broadcast for Greek fans to enjoy the LEC in their native tongue. In 2022, the YouTube channel Cosmote What’s Up covered the LEC, but as they did not cover the 2023 season Gamers Longue seized their opportunity. Gamers Longue received over 250K Hours Watched throughout the LEC, a large increase from Cosmote What’s Up’s 2022 viewership, which lay at 119.7K HW on YouTube. Gamers Longue also benefited from broadcasting the LEC on both YouTube and Twitch, diversifying their viewership sources.
Russian and Korean were two languages to almost entirely lose their viewership comparing 2022 to 2023, but these two languages were not popular within LEC broadcasting, to begin with. The official LoL Esports RU channel on YouTube and the riotgamesru Twitch channel did not broadcast the LEC in 2023, leading to a huge drop in viewership for the language compared to 2022. The Korean LECLCS AfreecaTV channel also halted its LEC coverage, leading to the language losing over 90% of its viewership.
Although official broadcasters for these languages were shutting down their broadcasts of the LEC in 2023, the LEC’s viewership was partially saved by increased viewership for particular regional broadcasters.
Fastest-growing LEC broadcasters
The broadcasters comparing the 2023 LEC to 2022 are vastly different. Many channels halted their LEC coverage, and on the flip side, many channels began broadcasting for the LEC. We’ve collected the data on the channels which received the most 2023 viewership compared to 2022, to look at which channels were the most successful in their growth this year. We’ve also included channels which did not broadcast in 2022, and counted their viewership as 0 Hours Watched, to highlight newcomers to the league.
Definitely anything but a newcomer to the League of Legends esports scene, ibai was the fastest-growing broadcaster for the LEC in 2023. Ibai’s massive streaming following helped him to secure his place at the top of these rankings, but his reputation as a previous LVP caster and his current title as the founder of KOI is also highly important. Ibai received 4.12M Hours Watched throughout the 2023 season, not enough to compete with the largest LEC broadcasters, but more than any newcomer to broadcasting the LEC achieved.
Behind ibai is the official LEC YouTube Live channel. The official Twitch channel for the LEC did lose viewership coming into 2023, but their YouTube counterpart prospered. The YouTube Live channel may have increased its viewership through the extra Airtime this year, but it also may have filled a gap in the market. As mentioned previously, Greek, Russian, and Korean broadcasters all halted their LEC coverage coming into 2023, and all of these streams were hosted on YouTube. The fans of these broadcasts most likely engaged with other broadcasts this year and spread their viewership across other popular streams,
In third place was otplol_, an official French broadcasting partner of the LEC. Otplol_ have established themselves as the go-to French broadcaster for any major League of Legends event, and they continued to build their audience throughout the LEC 2023. French esports seem to be undergoing a renaissance with teams like Gentle Mates and Karmine Corp dominating viewership in various disciplines, and the broadcasters are enjoying the boost too. The French broadcaster was the only channel with more than 1M Hours Watched on Twitch to enjoy growth greater than 10% compared to 2022. The channel received 1.499M more hours of watch time this year compared to the last.
With two new Spanish teams representing the homeland in the LEC, it was fated that Spanish broadcasters would receive a significant boost in viewership for 2023. LVPes, the official Twitch channel of the LVP league, received 479K more hours watched than last year, a boost of 7%. 7% is also the exact same growth the LEC achieved overall, so it seems the lvpes channel benefited from the new format and extra events just as the league did.
Finally, LoL TR was the final broadcaster to rank within the top 5, having received 477K hours of watch time. Although it may seem small compared to other regional broadcasts, the Turkish broadcaster also received another 475K hours of watch time on their Twitch streams. LoL TR represents a new wave of languages and regional broadcasts for the LEC. Turkish, Thai, Tagalog, and Slovak are just some of the languages that made their LEC broadcasting debut in 2023, and Turkish just happened to be the most successful in terms of viewership.
League of Legends is one of the biggest esports disciplines in the world, and leagues like the LEC amassed a massive audience for themselves, which peaked around 2020. However, since then, the league has struggled to keep the entirety of this audience engaged and watching the broadcasts at a level matching their previous peaks. The organisers of the league have taken matters into their own hands with a brand-new format to keep fans excited and stoking regional viewership through streamer-owned teams.
Although in some metrics the LEC 2023 continued to decline compared to last year, the watch time for the league did increase and regions like Spain and Turkey showed they still have lots to give the discipline. With the first year of the new format behind the LEC, only time will tell if the changes made to the league are enough to stop the decline of viewership and fully revitalise the league. Keep up to date with all things esports viewership at Esports Charts.
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