Worlds 2021 Play-In: Viewership Stats and Results

Play-In stage has ended at Worlds 2021, where ten teams competed for four spots in the group stage of the World Championship. There were a couple of upsets and surprises, but still all the main favorites successfully qualified for the next stage. Esports Charts summarized the Play-In results, here’s the viewership statistics of the first stage of the 2021 World Championship.

Play-In Viewership Stats

Disclaimer: Data doesn't include statistics from Chinese streaming platforms!

Worlds 2021 made its debut more successful than all other tournaments in the series. At the end of five days, the total time viewers spent watching broadcasts of Play-In exceeded 35.1 million hours, which is 17% more than during Worlds 2020. The result of the current tournament is also notable due to the fact that the Play-In broadcasts took only 40 hours (at the previous events it was 40+ hours).

The average audience of Play-In matches was 877.6 thousand people, but during the most anticipated matches the number of spectators exceeded 1.2-1.3 million people. The biggest excitement was around the Hanwha Life Esports, whose games were actively followed by League of Legends fans from South Korea. Three of its matches were the most popular during the first stage, and the first place went to the HLE game vs Brazilian team RED Canids: 1.33 million peak viewers.

Note that the second day of the Play-In stage gathered the most concurrent viewers, although it did not become the most successful gameday among the main regional broadcasts of the tournament. For example, the peak in English (405 thousand viewers) and Korean (376.6 thousand viewers) was reached on the first day of the event.

At the same time, League of Legends fans from Brazil were most active on the fourth day of the tournament, when the local team RED Canids lost to PEACE in a tense playoffs match. The game at its peak was watched by 334.8 thousand viewers of the Portuguese-language broadcast.

There was practically no intrigue in the final Play-In matches: both Cloud9 and Hanwha Life Esports defeated their rivals with the same 3:0 score. As a result, the fifth day of Play-In turned out to be the least successful in terms of the peak viewership (1 million people).

(Un)predictable Play-In Results

The key difference between the Play-In of the current tournament and the previous event in the series was the redistribution of regional slots. In 2020 one of the LEC teams started from the first stage, but this time a team from another major league (LCK) got into Play-In. However, last year's scenario did not happen: Hanwha Life Esports successfully completed the Play-In and joined their compatriots in the group stage.

Worlds 2021 has outperformed last event in the series by key viewership metrics

Perhaps the biggest news of Play-In was the scandal in which Maoan, a member of Beyond Gaming, was involved: player was accused of disclosing confidential information that was used by a third party to place bets. As a result, in the decisive match for the slot in the group stage, the PCS team played without their main midlaner: and Beyond was defeated with a score of 0:3.

Another surprise came from the best team of the last two years in the Japanese LJL league - DetonatioN FocusMe. Until this year, the team had rather modest results on the international arena, but now it has made it to the Worlds group stage for the first time ever.

Detailed viewership statistics of Worlds 2021

The matches of the Worlds 2021 group stage have already begun, and we are waiting for new records from the tournament. From this day on, all the most popular teams in the discipline, including T1, Fnatic, DAMWON Gaming and Team Liquid, are joining the fight for the title of world champion. Today we will sum up the results of the first day of the group stage, follow the news on our social networks!