The new LEC format brings a boost in watch time alongside the first regional Season Finals event in four years
As the LEC Finals 2023 wrapped up this past weekend, the 2023 season is officially at a close. 2023 was an exciting year for the LEC. They officially became the League of Legends EMEA Championship instead of the European Championship, and they expanded their circuit to now include a Winter Split, bringing the league up to three splits a season.
The 2023 season marked the 10th year of the LEC, and the new format for the league has brought a fresh feel to a veteran esports league. Not only did the LEC expand their league to include a third Winter split, but they also brought back a live LAN Finals event for the entire season. The last time the LEC saw a dedicated regional finals event was in 2019.
G2 Esports were the ultimate champions of the new Finals event and they extended their lead as the most successful team in LEC history. Their recent Finals regional title is their twelfth regional title in the history of the LEC. Let’s see how the new format for the LEC is fairing among fans and viewers in live-streaming.
LEC Finals 2023 Viewership
The new Finals event for the LEC brought in 654K concurrent viewers at peak. Fans tuned in for the Grand Finals match between G2 and Fnatic and the difference between the most popular game and the second-most popular game was quite apparent.
The event garnered 244.5K Average Viewers throughout the finals events, which is roughly average for the league across the last four years of competition. Events like the LEC Spring 2021 and LEC Summer 2020 received over 300K AV, but these events were some of the most-watched LEC Splits in recent years. We’ll take a look at the LEC in past years later in this text.
In total, the event drew in 8.7M Hours Watched throughout the weekends the Finals took place and Fnatic were the most-watched team of the entire event, with 5.7M hours of watch time coming directly from their matches. However, Fnatic did benefit from playing four games throughout the finals, whereas rivals G2 Esports only were required to play three matches in the Winner’s Bracket. 8.7M hours is hard to gauge as a success or not, due to having no other finals event to compare it to.
There was an LEC Regional Finals 2019 event, but this event did not see the top team in Europe compete and only determined the second and third spots for Worlds. Not only that, the event was also much shorter than the LEC Finals 2023, so making a direct comparison is difficult here. Although we cannot directly compare the new Finals event, we can compare the season as a whole.
LEC Viewership Across the Past Years
Over the past handful of years, 2020 and 2021 were the most successful for the LEC. Across the past three years specifically, 2021 was the most successful season in garnering viewership for all metrics: Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers. Viewership has generally been on a downturn for the LEC since 2021.
The new format did help the 2023 season achieve higher watch time than the previous year. However, the hours of watch time increased only by 7.5%, despite a 15.6% rise in broadcasting time. Looking towards Peak Viewers and Average Viewers, we can see the league has continued to lose viewership, albeit at a slower rate than the previous year.
The new format, including an extra Split and an all-new regional Finals, did increase watch time overall but also diluted viewership for the pre-existing Splits. Both Summer and Spring Splits saw fewer average concurrent viewers compared to last year, but with the Finals now acting as the ultimate qualifier for Worlds, the stakes were lowered for these Splits in 2023.
It’s too early to say if the new changes will be beneficial for the LEC in the future, as this was the first season and fans are still adapting to the new broadcasting schedule. The introduction of the Middle East and Africa as regions to compete in the LEC may improve viewership as these teams begin to compete at the top level and bring their regional viewership with them, but the LEC Finals 2023 event did not see any teams from these regions compete.
Ultimately, the new format for the LEC did improve watch time, but only through increasing the broadcasting time for the season. However, these statistics are overviews of the general viewership performance of the league and we will take a deeper look at the statistics we’ve collected for the season in future articles.
Peruse the statistics for the LEC Finals 2023 yourself on the tournament page, and keep an eye out for future articles dealing with the viewership of the LEC and its new 2023 format in future articles.
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