Worlds 2022 has started — NA vs EU battle gets the most viewers on Day 1
The first matches of World Championship 2022, the biggest and most prestigious League of Legends event with a prize pool of more than $2.2 million, took place on September 29 in Mexico. In the new article, Esports Charts will tell you about the results and viewership of the Play-In’s first day, as well as compare the starting statistics of the current championship with previous event of the series.
Results of Day 1
On the first day of the tournament, 12 teams (divided into two groups) played 8 matches in bo1 format. Most of them had one game each, and four teams played two matches each. Thus, Fnatic and MAD Lions won both of the matches and became leaders in their groups, while LOUD ended the day with 1:1 statistics, and İstanbul Wildcats lost twice and fell to the last place in group B.
Right before the start of the event, some Worlds 2022 participants tested positive for coronavirus. Because of that they had to perform separately from their teams, which, in turn, played on stage in front of the fans. An unaware viewer could be very confused watching live broadcast of the event, since, for example, Fnatic roster was completely absent on the stage during the matches.
Viewership Statistics
In total, the matches of the first day of Worlds 2022 collected more than 8.9 million Hours Watched with an average online of almost 830K concurrent viewers. The peak audience was reached during the match of the European team Fnatic against one of the best squads from North America, Evil Geniuses: over 1.1 million concurrent viewers watched this game. The top 3 most watched matches of the first day also included Isurus vs. MAD Lions and LOUD vs. Beyond Gaming, which were also watched by over 1 million viewers at peak.
The most watched team of the day was MAD Lions, whose games against Isurus and İstanbul Wildcats accumulated over 2.4 million Hours Watched. It was followed by other teams that played two matches each on the first day. At the same time, the total performance of none of them reached 2 million HW.
The most popular broadcast language was English, which collected more than 37% of the total HW number of the first day. The top 5 by this indicator also includes Portuguese, Spanish, Korean and French. As for channels, Twitch broadcasts of Riot Games, CBLOL and LLA were the leaders by HW.
Compared to the starting statistics of Worlds 2021, the first day of the current championship was less successful. Hours Watched number remained virtually unchanged, but peak and average audiences were down by about 14%. Note that the most popular match of the first day of Play-In last year was the game between Infinity and Hanwha Life Esports.
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The matches of the Play-In’s first round will run until October 2, resulting in two strongest teams advance to the group stage, and the four weakest teams being eliminated from the tournament. The remaining six teams will become participants in the second round of the Play-In, where they will fight for the last two slots in the group stage on October 3-4.
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