Vietnamese viewership dominates Worlds 2024 as GAM Esports emerged victorious from Asian derby

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On the second day of the Play-In stage at Worlds 2024, GAM Esports played Fukuoka SoftBank HAWKS in an Asian derby, and the Americas faced off with 100 Thieves and Rainbow7. These two games were ultimately not as popular as the opening day matches, which appealed to a wide variety of the world's largest League of Legends esports audiences, but still generated seven-figure viewership for the year-ending event.

The match between GAM Esports and Fukuoka SoftBank HAWKS was the more popular game of the day, reaching 1.16M Peak Viewers. This peak was largely driven by Vietnamese audiences, with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese audiences also combining to contribute a significant amount. In total, Asian viewership contributed about 56.3% of the total peak achieved on Day 2.

While Asian audiences were out in full force for the first game of the day, the second game achieved its seven-figure peak viewership through the combined force of the Americas’ audiences.

100 Thieves’ match against Rainbow7 was largely supported by North American and Spanish-speaking viewership, coming both from Spain and Latin America. English-language co-casters like Caedrel and the official Riot Games Twitch channel received high viewership during this game, becoming two of the most-watched streams for the day.

Spanish celebrity and co-caster ibai reached 98.4K Peak Viewers during his coverage of today’s matches, not as high as he’s managed while supporting his own MAD Lions KOI team, but still a substantial chunk of today’s viewers. Other Spanish-speaking fans supported Rainbow7 in their victory over 100T through the official LLA and LVPes broadcasting channels, as well as some less popular co-casters.

While viewership from the Americas and Spain were particularly powerful on the second day of the Play-In, Vietnamese audiences were a dominant force, and the most popular language of the day with over 402.3K Peak Viewers recorded.

Vietnamese support for GAM Esports was an unstoppable force for Worlds viewership for their first match. The viewership was exactly half that of the Vietnamese Peak reached during the grand finals of last year’s Worlds event, a promising peak to be reached so early during Worlds 2024. If GAM Esports are able to qualify for the main event, Vietnamese viewership could likely reach record-breaking heights this year.

This Vietnamese viewership was sourced from a myriad of channels. The official Vietnam Championship Series YouTube channel was not only the most popular Vietnamese stream with 239.8K Peak Viewers, but this cemented the channel as the most popular stream of the second day, and by a considerable margin. The official VCS YouTube channel reached a peak viewership more than 113K concurrent viewers higher than the next-most popular channel. 

There were also plenty of Vietnamese co-casters, such as Thầy Giáo Ba, spread out across popular livestreaming platforms in Vietnam, such as YouTube Live and NimoTV. There was also considerable Vietnamese viewership coming from their official TikTok account, which received 31.1K PV. The VCS TikTok account is the most popular TikTok account to cover League of Legends esports, and was a trend-setter which has now been followed by TikTok accounts for other regions and languages this year.

With each event, Vietnamese audiences for League of Legends only continue to grow and grow, with expectations high this year if GAM Esports can qualify to the tournament’s main stage. Other audiences like the Americas, Spanish fans, and Asian regional audiences also showed some potential on the second day of the Play-In, with plenty more opportunities for these audiences to reach high peaks.