MSI 2022: Viewership Stats of Day 1

Mid-Season Invitational 2022, the most prestigious League of Legends tournament in the first half of 2022, kicked off today, May 10, at the Busan Esports Arena. Top 11 teams in the world compete for $250K in the event. In a new article, Esports Charts will sum up the first day of the group stage of the tournament, as well as compare its viewership statistics with the previous year results.

Day 1 Results

T1, Royal Never Give Up, and G2 Esports proved to be the tournament's favorites on the first day of the group stage, and the LEC's best team did it twice in one day.

T1 easily defeated Saigon Buffalo and earned its 21st victory in a row. It should be noted that the win-streak of the South Korean team has lasted since the beginning of LCK Spring 2022. We should also remind you that Saigon Buffalo advanced to the tournament because GAM Esports, the top team in VCS Spring 2022, refused to participate.

DetonatioN FocusMe was much stronger than Team Aze — the match ended with a crushing score of 16:2. Royal Never Give Up beat Istanbul Wildcats with almost the same result — 16:5.

G2 defeated ORDER and Evil Geniuses, clearly showing its superiority in Group C. It should be noted that there are only three teams in this group and they have to play two matches a day, as the LCL split was canceled due to the war in Ukraine: the members of this league don't play in MSI in 2022.

The main sensation of the day is likely the defeat of PSG Talon, one of the main favorites at the tournament, by one of the main outsiders, RED Canids. It is worth mentioning that this defeat was the most devastating of the day, as the loser team couldn't make a single kill during the whole match — 13:0.

Day 1 Viewership Statistics

Mid-Season Invitational 2022 Day 1 amassed 3.19 million Hours Watched and drew 510.3K Average Viewers. G2 Esports vs. Evil Geniuses was the most popular encounter of the day, with over 722K Peak Viewers. And the highest number of Peak Viewers on Twitch was 526K people, and on YouTube — 222.4K.

English broadcasts gathered the most Peak Viewers on the first day of MSI 2022 (266.5K), whereas Korean broadcasts reached 207K PV and Vietnamese drew 137.3K PV. It should be noted that last year, Vietnamese viewers did not follow the Mid-Season Invitational matches as closely as they could because Vietnamese teams could not leave the country due to coronavirus restrictions.

Compared to last year's results, the first day of the MSI 2022 group stage showed very disappointing viewership numbers. The Hours of Watched number decreased by 43%, the Peak Viewers number dropped by 37%, and the Average Viewers number dropped by nearly 38%.

However, the first day of MSI 2022 was more successful than the first days of past tournaments in the series by Peak Viewers on Trovo and Facebook Gaming, Hours Watched on Afreeca TV and Facebook Gaming, and the number of French and Polish-speaking viewers.

It should be noted that a CS:GO tournament PGL Major Antwerp 2022 is held simultaneously with Mid-Season Invitational 2022. Due to this, the LoL Championship will inevitably lose a part of the audience in several languages, including Portuguese and Spanish. Moreover, MSI does not have a Russian-language broadcast this year.

MSI 2022 viewers are once again given in-game gifts for watching tournament broadcasts — both on the lolesports website and, for example, on Trovo. Usually such interactive activity boosts online events significantly, but this time its benefit is barely noticeable.

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Mid-Season Invitational 2022 group stage matches of Day 2 start on May 11. You can follow the tournament's viewership statistics on the tournament page.