LVP Superliga Summer 2024 records its worst viewership stats in years

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The Spanish professional League of Legends scene is currently facing difficulties. The recently concluded LVP Superliga Summer 2024 recorded the lowest peak viewership in the past three years. Not even featuring the official LVPes channel on the homepage of the popular sports site MARCA could boost the viewership enough.

The LVP Superliga Summer 2024 maintained its traditional format, though it did introduce a notable change: the number of spots allocated to the EMEA Masters from the Spanish league increased from three to six.

From a competitive standpoint, the season lacked significant intrigue. Barça eSports and Los Heretics dominated the group stage and clashed again in the playoff grand final. In the decisive match, Los Heretics achieved a convincing 3-0 victory, securing their second championship in history.

The audience reach for LVP Superliga Summer 2024 turned out to be disappointingly low, with the league's broadcasts totaling just 1.5 million Hours Watched, marking its worst performance in recent history. The tournament did not even crack the top 10 most-watched events of the series.

Average viewership for LVP Superliga Summer 2024 was a mere 14,200 concurrent viewers, exactly half of what the league had the previous summer. Peak viewership also saw a significant drop of 45%, reaching just over 88,000 concurrent viewers, the lowest in the past three years. Interestingly, this decline affected both the main official channel, LVPes, and the major community caster, Ibai, with peak viewership dropping by 22% and 47%, respectively.

The most watched match of the tournament was the grand final between Barça eSports and Los Heretics. However, both teams fell behind Movistar KOI in total watch time and average viewers per match.

Matches featuring Movistar KOI dominated the top five most-watched games of the season. The grand final received additional attention due to the autoplay stream of the LVPes channel on the homepage of the sports news site MARCA. For comparison, regular playoff days saw viewership on the league's official broadcasts not exceed 10,000 concurrent viewers. However, on the final day, this figure surged to 50,000, peaking at 80,000 viewers during the decisive match.

It's noteworthy that Barça eSports and Los Heretics met twice in the playoffs. Their upper bracket final peaked at only 12,000 viewers on the official broadcast. Yet, just a few days later, this number skyrocketed during the grand final, an unusual increase attributed solely to the external factor of the automatic stream launch on a popular website. Community casting numbers for these matches remained largely unchanged throughout the season.

Most popular Superliga seasons by Peak Viewers

The challenges facing LVP Superliga are evident, and there are several contributing factors. Firstly, the league suffers from uneven audience distribution, with most viewership gravitating towards Movistar KOI and Los Heretics. These teams are often covered by Ibai and TheGrefg. Interestingly, both also own teams in the LEC franchise league, which they follow more closely than their Superliga teams. Their audiences also tend to prefer matches involving top teams over academy squads.

Currently, viewership statistics for LVP Superliga have nearly regressed to the levels seen in the 2020/2021 seasons, before the arrivals of KOI and Team Heretics. The introduction of these clubs and community casting significantly boosted the league's viewership. However, since these teams transitioned to the LEC, viewership metrics for LVP Superliga have gradually declined season by season.

Another important yet rarely discussed issue is the league's identity crisis. LVP Superliga is still positioned as Spain's premier league, but each season sees an increasing number of foreign players joining. Despite being broadcast almost exclusively in Spanish, organizers should consider introducing streams in other languages.

Lastly, a specific challenge for the Spanish league, and many others like it, could be the revamped format of EMEA Masters. With 6 out of 10 teams from LVP Superliga qualifying for the main tournament, the significance of their performances in the domestic league is diminished. This potential loss of intrigue could further reduce viewer interest throughout the season.