The first few months of 2024 were home to some of the most popular esports events for various titles. From Valorant to Mobile Legends Bang Bang, esports games around the world are generating strong viewership within their respective scenes. Now that the first quarter of the year is behind us, Esports Charts collated the data for the most-watched esports events of the quarter, providing a basis for comparison between titles and a look at the esports industry as a whole.
The ongoing LCK Spring 2024 was the king of Q1 esports, breaking various records as the Korean fanbase for League of Legends only continues to impress and smash records. On the first day of the event, the match between titans T1 and Gen.G received 1.2M Peak Viewers, becoming the first-ever group stage match for the LCK to break 1M concurrent viewers.
Read also: Top Esports Matches in Q1 2024
In total, the Korean regional league generated 72.1M Hours Watched throughout Q1. The event itself stretches into Q2, but we have only considered the statistics generated by matches held during Q1 for this article. As of April 8, the LCK Spring 2024 has generated 82.8M HW, making it the most-watched season of the LCK ever. The Lower Bracket Final and Grand Final matches are yet to be played for this season of the LCK, and the Korean regional circuit may continue to break records with its final two matches.
In second place, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 generated 58.3M Hours Watched. The event was the first Major event for Counter-Strike 2, and fans were beyond excited to see how the esports landscape for the new title would pan out. The event was the most-watched Counter-Strike tournament since the previous 2023 Major, and it spelled good fortunes for the budding CS2 esports scene.
Wedged between two five-a-side shooters, MPL Indonesia Season 13 was the third-most-watched esports event of the first quarter of the year. The Indonesian regional esports circuit for ML:BB is one of the world’s most popular esports series. The MPL Indonesia is one of the rare esports event series to have broken 100M hours of watch time, and the viewership for Season 13 was high.
Most impressively, Season 13 of the MPL ID only began on March 8. The league will continue until early June, but it still managed to generate 41.4M Hours Watched in less than a month of matches. Compare this to the LCK Spring 2024 season, which began in mid-January. As the MPL ID Season 13 continues, it will generate more and more watch time; based on the high viewership it has already received, it may be able to once again reach that elusive 100M HW mark.
The first major international LAN event for the Valorant Champions Tour 2024 season generated 34.9M Hours Watched in a brisk amount of time. VCT 2024: Masters Madrid was by far the shortest event on our ranking, having been broadcast for only 52 hours across the entire event. The terse event did benefit from extremely high viewership thanks to the limited number of matches at the event, but there is a lot of potential left on the table for Valorant’s viewership in 2024.
Finally, ending back with League of Legends, the EMEA regional circuit generated 30.7M Hours Watched with its opening split of the year. The LEC Winter 2024 marked some of the highest viewership the regional circuit has enjoyed since the pandemic, and the new inclusion of Middle East and Africa to the league has bolstered the competition and brought some new viewership to the circuit.
The entrance of Karmine Corp to the league has also been a significant source of new viewership. The French esports organization has a massive following, and their matches against fellow content-creator-backed organization MAD Lions KOI has been a highlight of the league so far. The LEC Winter 2024 split garnered the highest average viewership the league has ever seen. The region has suffered with declining viewership in recent years, but this may all be behind the league now.
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Speaking of average viewership, we also collated the top esports events of Q1 2024 by average concurrent viewership. Some of the aforementioned tournaments can only show their true popularity through this metric, and other tournaments we have not yet looked at appear in this ranking.
Interestingly, one of the more popular games featured in the previous graphic does not appear in this one at all. Conversely, one of the less popular disciplines of the previous graphic cemented their popularity when the average concurrent viewership is considered. One other esports discipline also appeared for the first time in this article.
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