Esports Charts continues summing up the results of the passing year. And now it's time to tell you about the statistics of tournaments in the most popular esports discipline on PC — League of Legends.
As in previous years, LoL's most popular event of 2021 was the World Championship. The Worlds 2021 final match between EDward Gaming and DWG KIA drew over 4 million Peak Viewers and surpassed last year's Worlds 2020 by 3.5%. Moreover, the tournament set the record for the highest number of Hours Watched among all esports events ever. Viewers spent 174.83 million hours watching Worlds 2021 — almost 25 percent more than the Worlds 2020 result.
Second place in the rankings was taken by the first Mid-Season Invitational 2021 in two years, featuring the winners of 12 regional spring splits. The tournament was more than twice as far behind the most popular event of the year — it attracted 1.84 million Peak Viewers. This number was reached at the final match between Royal Never Give Up and DWG KIA.
Summer split of Korea's professional League of Legends league rounded out the top three. The broadcast of the LCK Summer 2021 Grand Finals, where T1 and DWG KIA competed, had 1.36 million Peak Viewers. It should be noted that T1 firmly secured its status as the most popular team in the tournament, drawing 374.4K Average Viewers at its matches.
LEC Summer 2021 took 4th place in the rankings — it attracted 843.5K Peak Viewers. The most popular match of the European league was not the grand final, but the third round of the lower bracket, which featured a classic derby between G2 Esports vs. Fnatic. Usually the teams met in the finals, but 2021 was not a pretty successful year for G2.
Top 5 LoL tournaments of the year was rounded out by the spring split of the same LCK. It is noteworthy that LCK Spring 2021 reached its Peak Viewers number (836K) in the group stage at the match between T1 and DWGK. Meanwhile, the grand final between DWG KIA and Gen.G Esports was only the 4th most popular match with 616.9K Peak Viewers.
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In 2020 Riot Games was not afraid to hold Worlds 2020 in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic, and thus earned the respect and loyalty of League of Legends fans. In 2021, LoL tournaments continued to become more and more popular around the world, setting new records. The end of the year was also remarkable for the release of the "Arcane" animated series, which drew the attention of people who had never played a MOBA before. Probably, in 2022 the audience of League of Legends will become even bigger, and the World Championship will break the viewership records again.
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