Worlds 2022 Play-In viewership drops for the first time in five years: late games for the Asian region is the main cause

Loading

World Championship is one of the biggest esports tournaments in history. Every year thousands of people from all over the world tune in to see the best League of Legends teams battle each other. The Play-Ins are the first stage of the event, where twelve teams fight for the remaining four places that are available in the Group Stage. We have a lot of teams from minor regions in this stage, and despite not being the main event of the tournament it’s still very important since it gives these less know teams a chance to prove their worth on the international stage. 

This year the tournament is held in North America, for the first time since 2016. It’s great for North American fans, but causes some problems for Asian and European ones. With the games starting late at night, the tournament has lost a lot of viewers, something that didn't happen in previous iterations. 

While from 2017 up until 2021 we saw an increase in AV and PV in the play-in stage, this year's edition numbers diminished. Worlds 2022 Play-In had a 16.2% drop in Peak Viewers, and 16.6% when it comes to Average Viewers, and it’s going against the upward trend we had seen in the past five editions of the event. 

While some languages have seen a rise in popularity, unfortunately, many have seen a drop in it. Asian languages, in general, have seen a decline compared to the previous Worlds’ Play-In stage, with Taiwanese Mandarin decreasing by 72% in AV compared to the previous event, Korean losing 61% of Average Viewers, Japan seeing a 35% decrease in Average Viewers, and Vietnamese also losing 35% of their AV, numbers that are uninspiring.

The Korean language saw the biggest drop in viewership, going from 141K AV in 2021 to just 58K AV in 2022. South Korea is considered by most the home of esports, with League of Legends being the most popular game in the country, and being something that is already mainstream in Korean society. Previously it was the second most popular language of the event, but now it seats in fourth place, and the French language is very close to surpassing them. 

Another Asian language that also saw a drastic drop in Average Viewers was Taiwanese Mandarin. It was the second biggest Asian language in the tournament in 2021, with 69K Average Viewers. This year that number dropped to just 19K Average Viewers and it was surpassed by the Vietnamese language. 

Some languages popular in Europe and even America have also seen a diminish in popularity. The German language lost 42% of its AV, and the Italian one also saw a 29% drop in Average Viewers. However, some languages have shown some growth, especially Spanish.

English has always been the most popular language of the event, and the trend continued this year. It saw an increase in AV, going from 255K to 295K AV in 2022. This number surpasses the AV amount of the 2020 edition and means that the English broadcasts are becoming even more popular, which is great news for the event. 

Spanish has seen its viewership numbers rise, especially in the past three editions. It went from being the fourth most popular language in 2020 and 2021, with a considerable gap to third and second place, to becoming the second most popular language in the Play-In of the current tournament. Since 2020 Spanish has gained a lot of Average Viewers. While in 2020 it had 55K AV, in the next year those numbers increased massively to 85K AV. This year it finally broke the 100K barrier, having 123K concurrent viewers, and surpassing the Korean and Portuguese languages.

The time zone of this event is very convenient for Latin America, which has a big Spanish-speaking audience. The LLA, the main Spanish broadcast for Latin America, and the lvpes, the main European Spanish broadcast, are the big responsibles for the good viewership numbers the language has been able to achieve this year. LLA grew 48.5% on AV this year, while the lvpes saw a 40% increase on Average Viewers. 

When we take a look at the time frame of the viewership activity of the past five tournaments, we can see that the viewership peaks from 11 PM to 2 PM GMT. After that, the viewership starts to slowly decline, and that is mainly because a lot of the European and Asian viewers leave the broadcasts. This year the games are happening from 7 PM to 6 AM GMT, which is when you have less viewership activity. During this period of time games have attracted around 800K Average Viewers, while in previous tournaments, from 2 PM to 4 PM GMT they attracted 1 million Average Viewers. Even when the number of AV started to decrease, until the 6 PM GMT mark, it still had 900K Average Viewers. In this event, we have seen a slight increase in viewership from 5 AM to 6 AM GMT. But it’s still very far from the numbers reached between 11 PM to 2 PM GMT in previous Play-In editions.  

When the events are held in Europe or Asia, as it was in the past four editions, the matches happened earlier, and there were much more people tuning in to see them. From 11 PM to 3 PM GMT, where the peak viewership is achieved, most viewers are from Asia and Europe, with only a small percentage being from North America. While in this year's time frame the majority of viewers are from North America, having less Asian or European viewers. 

It’s clear that European and Asian viewers are super important for the viewership success of the event, and when the matches don't happen at a favorable timezone for both regions, we can see a clear drop in the number of Average Viewers. Even when you have a hype match, such as DRX vs RNG, fewer viewers tune in, mostly because the games are happening very late for Asian and European viewers. 

The Worlds 2022 Play-In is now over and we already know the four teams that qualified for the group stage. The main event of the tournament will start soon, and we will finally be able to see some of the fan favorites in action. You can follow the matches and the event live viewership stats right here.