Mid-Season Invitational 2023 recap — community casting contributes over 30% of viewership
The Grand Final of the Mid-Season Invitational 2023, one of the major tournaments of the League of Legends esports scene, took place in London on May 21. The championship set several series records, including total Hours Watched and the Peak Viewers — and the community casting contributed a lot to the result. Read more in the Esports Charts review.
The Chinese team JD Gaming won the Mid-Season Invitational 2023 with a 3-1 win over their compatriots from Bilibili Gaming in the finals. The third place went to the Korean team T1. It should be noted that the victory at the MSI 2023 for JD Gaming was the first major achievement in the international arena: its best result before that was 3-4 place at the 2022 World Championship.
Mid-Season Invitational 2023 Viewership Results
Final Mid-Season Invitational 2023 viewership statistics
The Mid-Season Invitational 2023 matches accumulated 61.5 million Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number was 796.8K, and the Peak Viewers number was 2.29 million. The tournament set new records in the series for all these metrics.
The game between T1 and JD Gaming in the semifinals of the playoffs' upper bracket was the most popular matchup. As for the Grand Final, the series for the title became only the eighth most popular — the derby between Chinese teams was watched by about 1.2 million Peak Viewers. In other words, almost half as many during the confrontation between T1 and JD.
T1 and BiliBili Gaming are the leaders in terms of Hours Watched among the teams, with both teams accumulating about 21.8 million HW. T1 is also the leader by Average Viewers, with Faker being far ahead of all other teams by this metric.
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Most popular Mid-Season Invitational 2023 teams
The most popular broadcast language at the Mid-Season Invitational 2023 was English — it accumulated 26.6% of the total Hours Watched number. Korean and Vietnamese ranked second and third by this metric. The same languages ranked in the Top 3 in terms of Peak Viewers, only this time the Korean broadcast had the most viewers — 626.4K PV.
Comparison of Mid-Season Invitational 2023 with Previous Tournaments
Top 5 Mid-Season Invitational 2023 tournaments in terms of Peak Viewers
The Mid-Season Invitational 2023 has become the best tournament in the series by all key metrics. While the total Hours Watched and Peak Viewers rose only slightly, the Average Viewers number at the broadcasts increased by as much as 12% (compared to the MSI 2021).
The increase in the Average Viewers number became possible thanks to the active community casting of the tournament. In total, the Mid-Season Invitational 2023 matches were covered on nearly 100 different channels. The most popular community caster of the tournament was baiano from Brazil, who accumulated just over 3 million HW and drew 154.5 PV on Twitch. In addition to baiano, the MSI 2023 matches were covered by such streamers as Wolf, ibai, caedrel, fps_shaka, loud_coringa and others. It is also important to note the expansion of the list of platforms — the tournament was again broadcast on Naver Esports (as the MSI 2021).
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The ratio of official casting and community casting at MSI 2023
In total, the MSI 2023 community cast accumulated about a third of the total Hours Watched of the entire tournament. Without the contribution of independent streamers, the Peak Viewers number of the tournament would have been about 1.62 million. It is interesting that the Top 3 community streamers come from different streaming platforms — Twitch, AfreecaTV, and NimoTV.
Peak Viewers number of MSI 2023 could have been even higher
Only three matches at the MSI 2023 gathered more than 1.5 million Peak Viewers, and all three matches featured the T1 team. After T1 was eliminated from the tournament, the number of viewers dropped sharply.
If we compare the most popular match of the tournament (T1 vs JD) with the Grand Final (JD vs BiliBili), we get the following dynamics: AfreecaTV lost 66% of its Peak Viewers, YouTube dropped by 57%, and Twitch by 24%. The Grand Final was not covered on NimoTV at all, even though the T1 vs JD match set a record for the platform, with 112.1K Peak Viewers (thanks to Thầy Giáo Ba's broadcast).
When comparing these two matches, there was also a huge drop in viewers by language. For example, during the Grand Final (JD vs BiliBili), Vietnamese and Korean broadcasts lost about 70% of their concurrent audience compared to the most popular match of the tournament (JD vs T1). There was a 34% decrease in English viewership. Clearly, the Grand Final could have attracted significantly more viewers if there were representatives from different regions.
The Chinese derby left many fans from Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan indifferent. Differences in time zones with the venue (London) also played a big role in this. The activity of European viewers on the last day of the tournament also decreased, but not as much. At least the Peak Viewers number on Spanish streamer ibai's channel during the Grand Final was at about the same level as during the T1 vs JD match.
To sum everything up, the MSI 2023 was a great tournament that has set several records in the series. Riot Games' bet on community casting and expanding the list of broadcast platforms fully justified itself, although the tournament didn't manage to reach its full audience potential. This was hindered by the not-so-prominent composition of the participants in the Grand Final.
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