LTA 2025: Learning from the hurdles of a Pan-American league merge

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The final matches of the LTA 2025 Championship wrapped up in Los Angeles last weekend. This interregional League of Legends tournament decided which teams from North and South America would advance to the 2025 World Championship. The event also marked the end of Riot Games’ experiment of merging the two regions, and the results are clear: from a viewership perspective, the experiment didn’t pan out as hoped.

The LTA 2025 Championship brought together the top three teams from both LTA North and LTA South. The six contenders battled it out for three coveted spots at the upcoming World Championship. FlyQuest claimed the title, while Vivo Keyd Stars and 100 Thieves secured the remaining two slots with second- and third-place finishes. Unfortunately, powerhouse organizations like Team Liquid and Cloud9 won’t be making an appearance at the biggest event of the season.

LTA 2025 Championship Viewership Statistics

According to Esports Charts, the LTA 2025 Championship racked up 4.38 million Hours Watched. Average viewership sat at 199,100 live viewers, while the peak climbed to 318,400 concurrent viewers during the final between Vivo Keyd Stars and FlyQuest.

The most popular LTA tournaments in 2025

The backbone of the LTA 2025 Championship audience was Portuguese-speaking fans, who mostly tuned in through Gustavo “Baiano” Gomes’s streams. The Brazilian creator broadcasted the matches simultaneously on YouTube, Twitch, and Kick, with all three channels landing in the top five most-watched community caster streams of the tournament.

Portuguese-language streams accounted for a massive 68.4% of the total watch time, while English-language broadcasts pulled in only half that amount. The same split held true for both average and peak viewership. In short, despite the tournament featuring an equal mix of North and South American teams, the audience was overwhelmingly driven by fans from Brazil.

How successful was the LTA format?

To gauge how the LTA seasons performed, the clearest comparison is with the most recent splits of the North American LCS and Brazil’s CBLOL.

Last year, CBLOL’s Split 1 and Split 2 of 2024 posted higher watch time and peak viewership than any LTA South season. The decline is also clear in average viewers per stream: Split 1 2024 averaged 171,600 concurrent viewers, whereas across the three LTA seasons, this figure fell from 162,200 to 122,000. 

Comparison of CBLOL 2024 and LTA South 2025 seasons

The same trend appears when comparing LCS to LTA North. For example, LCS Spring 2024 and Summer 2024 seasons drew higher numbers than any LTA North season across all viewership metrics. Still, it’s worth noting that the viewership gap between LCS and LTA North was smaller than the gap seen between CBLOL and LTA South.

Comparison of LCS 2024 and LTA North 2025 seasons

In short, merging LCS and CBLOL into the LTA brand shook up the scene but didn’t boost viewership in either region. Under the new format, audience numbers dropped across North and South America. Thus, Riot Games has already announced plans to bring back LCS and CBLOL in 2026. What’s still uncertain, though, is whether these leagues will feature any changes and what the future holds for Latin American teams. 

When discussing LTA’s viewership trends, we can’t overlook LCP, another league that launched in 2025. LCP followed a similar idea: combining several regional leagues across Southeast Asia into a single league to streamline international tournament qualification and boost local fan engagement.

In total, all events in the LTA 2025 series gathered twice as many hours watched as the LCP 2025 seasons and tournaments. LTA’s average viewership is 42% higher than LCP’s. At the same time, LCP led in peak viewership thanks to the match between GAM Esports and CTBC Flying Oyster at the LCP 2025 Mid Season. Unlike LTA, though, merging Southeast Asian leagues under the LCP brand actually boosted viewership. For instance, average viewership during LCP 2025 seasons was twice as high as during VCS 2024. This comparison focuses on VCS because Vietnamese language and audiences form the core of LCP. Of course, fans following teams from PCS, LJL, and LCO contributed as well, but their engagement was far lower than that of Vietnamese viewers.

It remains uncertain whether Riot Games will keep experimenting with the LTA and LCP formats. However, the 2025 season shows that applying the same approach in different regions can produce very different outcomes — at least when it comes to viewership.