LEC Summer 2022 results — the league is rapidly losing audience
September 11 saw the end of the League of Legends' LEC Summer 2022. The Esports Charts team has summed up the results of the spli, as well as calculated the audience reach on the official broadcasts. Unfortunately, the summer season was one of the most unpopular in the history of the European league, and there were several reasons for that.
LEC Summer 2022 results
LEC Summer 2022 took place from June 17 to September 11. First, teams played a series of round-robin group stage matches, after which six playoff participants were determined: G2 Esports (12:6), MAD Lions (12:6), Rogue (11:7), Misfits Gaming (10:8), Fnatic (10:8) и Excel Esports (9:9) advanced to the final stage of the tournament.
G2 Esports was the first team to advance to the split finals, defeating Misfits Gaming and Rogue in the upper bracket. The second finalist was Rogue, defeating MAD Lions in the first round and then defeating Fnatic in the lower bracket. In the decisive match, Rogue took revenge on G2 Esports for its defeat in the spring season finals by crushing the opponent with the score of 3:0.
Rogue and G2 Esports won group stage slots in the 2022 World Championship for reaching the finals. Fnatic and MAD Lions will also play in the World Championship, but will start it from the Play-In stage.
LEC Summer 2022 Viewership Statistics
LEC Summer 2022 matches accumulated more than 30.4 million Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number on the European broadcasts was 211.7K, and the Peak Viewers number reached 732.5K viewers. The most popular match is the final of the split between G2 Esports and Rogue. It is interesting that Fnatic became the most watched team in Europe, as its matches amassed 9.8 million HW. G2 Esports had the highest number of Average Viewers at matches, 272K concurrent viewers. Fnatic and Rogue are slightly behind the leader by this metric.
The main language of LEC Summer 2022 broadcasts is English: the English-language broadcasts reached 473K Peak Viewers. In second place is the Spanish-language broadcast (88.8K PV), and in third place is the French-language broadcast (78.6K PV). The latter could probably have drawn a bigger audience, but the Z Event 2022, which was held at the same time as the league finals, was an obstacle for this: many French viewers preferred to watch it.
Comparing the Hours Watched numbers, English accounted for more than 61% of the total HW, French is in second place (15.4% of HW), while Spanish is in third place (10.8% of HW). All other languages had below 5% of total HW.
At the same time, the majority of viewers watched the tournament on Twitch — 568.3K PV against 151.4 PV on YouTube. About 17K people followed the tournament on Afreeca TV. Notably, Twitch accounted for more than 80% of the tournament total HW.
Comparison of LEC Summer 2022 with previous seasons
Compared to past tournaments in the series, LEC Summer 2022 is one of the least successful in terms of audience reach. The tournament showed the lowest average online since 2019 and it caused a drop in HW, which resulted in the worst total over the past three seasons. At the same time, LEC Summer 2022 was on air longer than any other split in the past four years, but it was of no help to the league in terms of watch time. The Peak Viewers number was also quite low, but the summer still managed to increase this metric slightly compared to the even less popular Spring 2022 event.
LEC seasons viewership comparison
Overall, based on both 2022 splits we can conclude that LEC is having a bad time right now. We can see a gradual decline in all the main metrics, especially if we compare them with LEC Summer 2020 / LEC Spring 2021 results. After this milestone, a gradual outflow of the audience began, and there are several reasons for this.
Conclusions
Traditionally, the LEC's audience reach has been closely related to the popularity of two European top clubs, G2 Esports and Fnatic. The teams of these organizations have most often won league championships or participated in the most popular split matches. For many years the fans of these clubs helped the league to build an audience, but if these teams face any difficulties, it affects the audience reach of the league. For example, if a star player with a large fan base leaves the lineup or if teams do not encounter each other in the playoffs, as happened during the LEC Summer 2022.
Rekkles and Perkz are two former Fnatic and G2 Esports stars
Another reason is the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the digital entertainment industry. The entire 2020 and early 2021 were a period of epidemic and severe lockdowns. The restrictions have in part helped popularize esports in general, because it is one of the few leisure activities that has been virtually unaffected by the pandemic. People started playing more games and watching more esports matches at the peak of the pandemic, the audience of streaming services, including Twitch, was on the rise.
Now, the coronavirus restrictions have either been completely lifted or significantly limited in most countries: people are returning to their normal lifestyle and spending less time in front of screens, especially in the summer. However, taking this fact into account, even if the audience of the league was to shrink, it should still not be as dramatic.
What can we expect from the league in 2023?
The LEC list of participants is likely to change quite a bit in 2023 — and first slot resales have already begun. In the spring of 2023, Team Heretics, the organization that bought the slot from Misfits Gaming, will debut in LEC. It's rumored, that TSM is also interested in moving to the European league — it could take the place of Astralis, which is also reportedly looking for a slot buyer. Karmine Corp, one of the most media present esports organizations in France, which is owned by the popular streamer Kamet0, is also rumored to be looking for the same slot. KC plays in LFL for now and gathers hundreds of thousands of viewers at European Masters. If the league is joined by such popular organizations, we can expect a significant growth of viewership.
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