After strong start, Worlds 2025 Swiss Stage audience drops 30% year-on-year

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The 2025 League of Legends World Championship is heating up, and some teams have already secured playoff spots, while others are heading home. After an explosive start, viewership has taken a noticeable hit midway through the Swiss Stage, with Korean fans doing their best to keep the numbers afloat. As Worlds takes a short break before the final rounds of Swiss matches, let’s look at the current audience trends and how they stack up against last year’s event.

After five straight days of intense action, two teams have already secured their playoff spots: KT Rolster and Anyone’s Legend, bronze medalists of the LCK and LPL, respectively. Both swept their opening three matches, with the Chinese side even taking down the mighty Gen.G on their way.

Meanwhile, PSG Talon and Fnatic became the first to bow out of Worlds — both in dramatic fashion. PSG fell to Brazil’s Keyd Stars in the elimination match, while Fnatic were knocked out by their European rivals, KOI.

The Swiss Stage has already featured plenty of thrilling series, but most fans are tuning in for just one team, T1. After the first five days, T1’s matches dominated the viewership charts, taking all top three spots. Their showdown with long-time rivals Gen.G stood out in particular, becoming the only Swiss Stage match so far to exceed 2 million concurrent viewers.

Following their loss to Gen.G, T1 are on the brink of elimination with a 1:2 record, and their upcoming match against 100 Thieves will be do-or-die. The outcome will shape not only the team’s fate but also the tournament’s viewership potential.

Unfortunately, Worlds 2025 viewership during the Swiss Stage has been far from impressive and even somewhat worrying. Following an exceptionally strong Play-In, audience enthusiasm has clearly cooled, leading to declines across nearly all key metrics compared to last year’s stage.

In terms of airtime, the first half of the Worlds 2025 Swiss Stage nearly matched last year’s event, yet average viewership fell by roughly 30%, and peak viewership did so by 21%. Audience decline was visible across nearly all major demographics except Korea, where viewership peaked 9% higher, largely thanks to the T1 vs. Gen.G matchup. Notably, the Spanish-language peak dropped by over 40%, even with KOI still in the tournament.

Worlds is struggling so far, with viewership spikes largely tied to whether T1 is playing and who they’re facing. If the team fails to make the playoffs, the audience picture could get even worse.

Worlds 2025 returns on October 22, with Hanwha Life Esports and CTBC Flying Oyster up first to battle for playoff spots, followed by G2 Esports and FlyQuest. Keep track of the tournament and its viewership stats on Esports Charts.