Most Popular Team Performances at League of Legends Worlds event series

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The 2024 World Championship for League of Legends is upon us. The yearly event is on a streak of breaking esports viewership records, and each year, the tournament seems to somehow find even more viewers than last year. Before we begin our rigorous coverage of the on-going world championship, Esports Charts has collated the viewership statistics of all past World Championship events in League of Legends, to highlight the teams who have achieved the highest viewership throughout this event series.

Of course, no ranking of Worlds viewership would be complete without T1 dominating it. The South Korean organization is League of Legend’s most legendary team, and their star player Faker has fans all around the globe. At last year’s Worlds, T1 was competitively dominant, and 2.95M Average Viewers from around the globe watched them storm through the playoffs bracket. If T1 are able to recreate this domination again, they could break over 3 million average concurrent viewers this year, and catapult the event series to a new peak viewership record again. 

Moving past T1, another South Korean organization took the second spot on this ranking, Dplus. At the 2021 World Championship, the team was able to knock T1 out of the event in a semifinals match. Their matches against T1, European organization MAD Lions, and their grand final match against EDward Gaming made Dplus the most-watched team of the entire tournament. Dplus’ quarterfinals against MAD and semifinals against T1 were ideal matches for generating viewership, and being the Korean representative in a Worlds grand final is always going to bring massive viewership for a team. Aside from these two South-Korean organizations at the top of our ranking, the midfield of our ranking was largely dominated by Chinese teams. 

At Worlds 2023, JD Gaming and Weibo Gaming both qualified through the Swiss Stage, but on opposite ends of the table. JD Gaming advanced with a flawless 3-0 victory and a tied-first seed, whereas Weibo Gaming clawed their way through with a 3-2 record and tied-sixth seed. Weibo Gaming were the dark horses of playoffs, and JD Gaming were the undefeated favourites. Ultimately, JD Gaming were eliminated by T1, and Weibo Gaming advanced through the semifinals to play against T1 for the world championship. Although Weibo Gaming were defeated by T1 0-3 in the finals, them and JD Gaming were able to generate massive international viewership, thanks to their strong results.

The same is true for the other Chinese teams here. FunPlus Phoenix and EDward Gaming are the respective champions of their listed events, and Suning Gaming finished Worlds 2020 in second place. DRX also achieved their 1.56M AV through a strong competitive performance, having claimed the world championship in 2022, and further up the ranking, G2 Esports received 1.9M AV for their second-place at Worlds 2019.

Gen.G are the final team of our ranking, with their 1.53M AV from Worlds 2023. This viewership almost entirely reflects the team’s short Swiss Stage run, as the team was eliminated from the event in their first playoffs match against Bilibili Gaming. After advancing 3–0 through the Swiss Stage against tough opponents like T1 and G2 Esports, fans thought Gen.G had a serious chance of winning the entire event. The team stumbled at the first step of playoffs, but was still able to record one of the most-watched Worlds runs ever, thanks to their perceived dominant form.