The meteoric rise of Spanish and other interesting statistics from LEC Winter 2023
The LEC Winter 2023 recently ended, with G2 Esports beating MAD Lions in the Playoffs Grand Final 3:0 to book their slot in the MSI 2023 and the LEC 2023 Finals. The German organization also took home prize money of $42,430, alongside 120 championship points that could be crucial to the side’s qualification dreams for the Season Finals.
This split was also the first to be held since the LECs merger with EMEA Masters, as announced at the end of 2022 by Riot Games, thus leading to the official name of the event becoming the League of Legends EMEA Championship. There will also be three splits instead of the usual two — Winter, Spring, and Summer — with three gameweeks hereon, i.e., Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. The Split Finals will always occur on Sundays.
This also meant the introduction of a new format to the league, with teams now facing off over three stages: Regular Season, Group Stage, and Playoffs. Phase 1 will be played in a Single Round Robin format, with the top eight teams heading to the next stage.
The Group Stage then sees sides divided into two groups and playing in the GSL format. The Playoffs (double-elimination bracket) remain unchanged, although only four teams can now battle it out in this final stage. This crucially means that each split lasts for a lesser time than in previous years due to having to accommodate an extra split from 2023 onwards.
Moreover, there were lots of changes when it came it the teams participating under this new format. Team Heretics and KOI debuted at this year’s LEC after TE bought Misfits Gaming’s LEC slot, while KOI, owned by famous Spanish content creator Ibai Llanos, and Rogue entered a “strategic alliance” that led to the latter’s rebranding.
This new format also means that Esports Charts will not be using Hours Watched as a metric to calculate the viewership between the LEC Winter 2023 and last year’s Splits. The schedule change and resultant shortened stream times mean that using Average Viewers would give a better understanding of the changes in audience numbers between the current year and 2022’s events.
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Major languages see spike in AV numbers
Overall, the Spring 2023 tournament saw a spike in AV compared to the two splits from 2022 — LEC Spring 2022 and LEC Summer 2022. This year’s first split under the new format saw 280,218 Average Concurrent Users, compared to 270,749 AV and 211,743 AV in Spring 2022 and Summer 2022, respectively.
This was also reflected in the AV numbers of the big three languages for the LEC — English, Spanish, and French — which saw increases in their Average Minute Audience numbers. English registered 156,219 AV, Spanish 49,912 AV, and French 46,672 AV, each an improvement on the previous two splits. Although English in the LEC Spring 2022 registered a higher number at 166,454 AV, the difference to Spring 2023 was pretty small when looking at the overall numbers.
Spanish was a major riser this year, compared to the previous two splits, and the reasons are pretty obvious. With two new teams from the country making their debuts, including one owned by Ibai, interest in this League of Legends competition was pretty high, which is why this language was the biggest improver in 2023.
KOI was responsible for a majority of this improvement, as it was the top team regarding Average Spanish Viewers (99.8K). Ibai’s organization finished above a top side like G2 (58K) by a whopping 72.1%.
French also saw a favorable 53.2% rise at this year’s LEC Winter tournament, reaffirming the fact that it’s one of the most prominent markets for LoL. A majority of this support would have been for the only French side in the event, Team Vitality, who disappointingly finished with a 1-2 record in Pool A of the Group Stage after ending in the top two of the Regular Season on all three weeks.
A new language that popped up as a potential future favorite was Turkish, as the new format meant fans had to tune in to watch their favorite teams and pros play against a much stronger field than usual. With the Turkish Championship League (TCL) no longer a big event that ensured direct qualification to the MSI, instead serving as a qualifier to the EMEA Masters, Turkish-speaking audiences moved their focus to the LEC Spring 2023, resulting in this rise.
However, one area where most languages faltered was Peak Viewers, as most saw dips in this metric. With the expansion in the number of splits, attention will also be divided, so while the first tournament of 2023 was good for AV and bad for PV, a more concrete conclusion can only be made once the season ends, as there will be more stats to work with and make the analysis more reliable.
Audience overlap: CS:GO stays strong despite LoL events peaking
Lastly, if the table for overlap with other tournaments is studied, the findings point to the fact that, as expected, the LCK and LCS Spring competitions were more popular among LoL fans. In fact, the top four events were all events based on Riot’s MOBA, alongside the LVP and LPL Spring events, meaning Riot’s schedule change had some kind of effect on the viewership numbers of its various leagues.
Below these names, two CS:GO events, IEM Katowice 2023 and BLAST Premier Spring 2023, sandwiched the LFL, apart from being more sought after than the ALGS: 2023 Split 1 Playoffs, Six Invitational 2023, and RLCS 2022-23 - Winter: EU Regional 1 - Winter Open. This shows that there is still an interest and love for Valve’s tactical shooter that just cannot be quantified into numbers a decade-plus after its release.
As the LEC shifts to the other two splits over the season, these numbers are bound to change, some minimal and others by a lot, What is undeniable is that interest in the competition despite the format change and new teams getting added has not really affected its following, and fans continue to flock the event to watch their favorite teams and players duke it out in their most loved esport discipline.
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