MSI 2022 Group Stage Results and Statistics

The group stage of the Mid-Season Invitational 2022 is behind us, and it's time to sum it up. The results of the first stage of the tournament turned out to be quite predictable, and some of the matches had no fundamental tournament significance at all. Together with not the most convenient time zone for some regions, all this affected the viewership statistics of the competition. Esports Charts analyzes how the competition’s stats decreased, and also talks about the most popular MSI participants, as well as matches and broadcasts that have gathered the largest audience.

MSI 2022 Group Stage Results

Naming the favorites in three groups was not a difficult task, even for those who do not follow League of Legends esports very closely. T1, Royal Never Give Up and G2 Esports looked much stronger than their rivals and confirmed it throughout the stage, not losing a single map to their opponents.

Faker dares T1’s opponents to beat the team at least once. Photo by Lee Aiksoon/Riot Games

As for the rest of the teams, the contenders for second places also seemed obvious: in quartet B, PSG Talon looked the strongest, and in group C, hardly anyone expected Evil Geniuses to miss the chance to advance to the next round. In the end, that was exactly what happened. Although the champions of PCS Spring 2022 showed far from the most confident game, they still outperformed RED Canids, while EG lost all the matches to G2, but still didn’t let ORDER to come out on top in face-to-face games.

There was no intrigue in quartet A either, where Saigon Buffalo took the second place. The runner-up of the Vietnamese league could not oppose T1, but they won all the matches against DetonatioN FocusMe and Team Aze.

Summing up, all the strongest teams of the tournament made it to the playoffs. Now fans are looking forward to perhaps the main games of the tournament: everyone is wondering if G2 Esports can beat T1. We'll find out very soon:the Rumble Stage starts already this Friday on May 20.

MSI 2022 Group Stage Viewership Statistics

Despite the success of the regional leagues this spring and the participation of the top teams from all over the world, MSI 2022 shows far from the most impressive statistics in terms of online audience so far. And there are several reasons for this.

Over six game days, the tournament's matches scored 17.3 million Hours Watched, and the average audience at the games reached 440K viewers. Both metrics turned out to be 37% lower than during the MSI 2021 group stage.

Among the main reasons for the drop in statistics are both the predictable outcomes of most matches and far from the most convenient time zone: matches are held in South Korea and start quite early by the standards of Europe and North America, where LoL is very popular. In addition, it must be remembered that the previous tournament of the series took place after a year of hiatus caused by the pandemic, so close attention was riveted to it, which is hard to exceed.

The most popular match of the tournament at the moment is the T1 game against DetonatioN FocusMe, at its peak it attracted 818K viewers. It’s 30% less than the peak that was reached during MSI 2021 group stage. Note that the top three most popular games included only T1 matches. If we consider the top 5, then it included the meeting G2 against EG on the first day of the group stage.

As expected, the most popular team in the group stage was T1 as few can compete with it in terms of the audience in the entire discipline. On average, 575K spectators gathered at the matches of the Korean team. Due to the overall popularity of T1, three of its opponents entered the top 5 teams. As for the teams of other groups, G2 Esports distinguished itself with an average audience of 462K people.

If we consider the most watched broadcasts of the tournament, then there were also no surprises. The top five streams included official English-language broadcasts that take place on Twitch and YouTube. In addition, the Korean Twitch channel LCK_Korea enjoyed success, as well as Vietnamese YouTube channel & Twitch channel lolpacifictw, which broadcasts to an audience from Taiwan.

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The Rumble Stage will take place from May 20 to 24: all the best teams of the group stage will perform in one group, and four squads will advance to the playoffs. You can follow the progress of the matches and their LIVE statistics on the tournament page.