LPL Spring 2024 gains more Peak Viewers than LCS for second straight split
The LPL Spring 2024, held across multiple cities in China, concluded on April 20 with Bilibili Gaming clinching its maiden title. The League of Legends event ended up more popular than its North American counterpart for the second straight split, driving home the point that the latter's continued decline is coming at a time when its Asian rival is seeing a speedy rise.
The LPL Spring 2024 saw defending champions JD Gaming lose to Top Esports Gaming in the Lower Bracket Finals to finish third. In the Grand Final, Bilibili Gaming beat the latter by the same scoreline to emerge as a regional champion for the first time.
The winner took home around $276K while the runner-up got richer by about $138K, with the former champion pocketing a little over $69K. The top two also qualified for the Mid-Season Invitational 2024, the first international tournament of the year in the discipline.
The LPL Spring 2024 registered 292K Peak Viewers during the summit clash, with the losing finalists' matches being of special interest to viewers. That is seen in the fact that it has the most entries on the most popular games list, with four, perhaps also an indication of the caliber of opponents it played.
After all, they faced JD Gaming and Bilibili Gaming — two of the most followed sides in the league — twice each. Such is their ability to draw viewership that apart from the top three, only Ninjas in Pyjamas — who finished fourth — made the above table, with these teams' popularity also helping this competition record 13.7M Hours Watched and 37.7K Average Viewers over 365 hours of airtime.
There was also a surprise name atop the most popular team (by average online viewership) leaderboard at the LPL Spring 2024. Moreover, English streamers had a good time live broadcasting the matches, with Caedrel emerging as the most popular overall channel and second on the watch time standings.
When comparing this competition to last year's split, all the major metrics went up despite a fall in the airtime. Its availability on more platforms, including CHZZK and Trovo, was a contributing factor, with the number of channels live streaming the games shooting up from 24 to 64 as a result.
This meant that more viewers this year were able to access games in a region that is notorious for being highly inaccessible to many parts of the globe. The increased audience numbers were also a result of more prominent content creators showing an interest in happenings, including Baiano, Tolkin, Teshrak, Skyyart, and Champi14.
The LPL Spring 2024 also became the series' most popular tournament for three years and its most-watched since 2022. Most impressively, this was the second straight split where it finished higher than its LCS counterpart when it came to peak concurrent viewership.
The LCS Spring 2024 ended with a paltry 246.2K PV, lower than the Brazilian CBLOL's Split 1, which reached 459.8K PV. In fact, with the current downward viewership trend that the NA league is on, it will soon be surpassed by the LFL, France's second-tier circuit for LoL.
In fact, when comparing all the spring events going on in League of Legends at the moment, LCS' entry also comes below the Vietnamese and merged EMEA leagues when it comes to popularity. How the once-powerful league fixes its issues remains to be seen, but the performances of its teams at upcoming events like the MSI will be crucial to any upturn in fortunes.
As the largest franchise league in terms of the number of participating sides in the discipline, the LPL has 17 teams battling it out every time. While that might mean a slightly more cumbersome format compared to its global peers, there is a higher chance of diverse teams making it far while also giving audiences more action to whet their LoL esports appetite.
With these teams also doing well at international competitions, it looks like the only way is up for now. To keep up with such pieces and more, readers can follow Esports Charts on social media and check out the news section here.
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