Worlds 2025: YouTube Chat data shows Vietnamese as the most-engaged major audience
The top matches of Worlds 2025 by chat engagement could surprise you; they’re not always the typical clash of the titans matches that reach high peak viewerships, but exciting upsets and surprise wins. In fact, the top match by the metric across all major languages featured a Vietnamese and an American team, not even the usual Korean titans that dominate viewer charts. Using Streams Charts’ updated Chat Analyzer, we highlight the games that captivated YouTube viewers the most.
Often, high viewership can be counter-productive to a high result in chat engagement; for example, we can clearly see the waves of Korean viewers that tune in for exciting playoffs matches or games featuring T1 are less likely to interact with chat, instead preferring to simply follow the action. This can explain why the Korean channel’s engagement is not dominated by T1 games.
For the official English-language LoL Esports channel, the top match by chat engagement for the Swiss Stage was Secret Whale’s game against Vivo Keyd Stars, the opening game of the group stage for Worlds 2025. The first game of the stage enjoyed a special attention from chatters across all major languages, including Korean and Vietnamese.
In general, the top matches for chat engagement in the English-language official broadcast included various Korean derbies. The most popular of these was KT Rolster’s playoffs game against Gen.G, coming out ahead of T1 and Gen.G’s clash in the Swiss Stage and HLE and Gen.G’s opening playoffs match. The match between KT Rolster and Gen.G was an exciting 3-1 sweep for the former squad, who were cheered on by both international and local fans as they fought for their first-ever Worlds grand finals appearance.
CTBC Flying Oyster was also the cause of much engagement throughout their Swiss Stage run and playoffs match. The Taiwanese roster capped off a strong 2025 with their first-ever Worlds playoffs appearance, and their journey through the Swiss Stage enjoyed particularly strong engagement from English-speaking CTBC fans — or mourned by Fnatic and FlyQuest fans.
Lastly, 100 Thieves’ surprising, opening-day victory against BLG caught the attention of many fans in chat. This first lost set a poor tone for Bilibili Gaming at Worlds 2025, and ultimately, the former Worlds finalist would fail to advance to playoffs.
Among Korean-speaking viewers on the LCK YouTube channel, the opening match of Worlds 2025 again ranked ahead of the competition. It was followed by opening-day underdog results, such as Fnatic’s loss against the CFO, and unsurprisingly, playoffs matches featuring Korean rosters.
Interestingly, KT Rolster appeared in this ranking more often than any of its LCK peers. The South Korean organization has been a mainstay and legend of the Korean esports industry for decades, including successes in StarCraft II and League of Legends. While a strong regional contender, the team struggled to place highly at international events, only making an at-best quarterfinals appearance for many years at Worlds. However, the curse would finally be broken with their magical run through Worlds 2025.
After defeating KOI on the opening day of the event, KT defeated Chinese team Top Esports Gaming with a clean 2:0 result, and advanced to the playoffs stage. There, their games against Gen.G and CTBC were highly popular, despite Korean audiences engaging with chat much less often than other Asian fans, like those from Vietnam.
Ultimately, KT Rolster would defeat CTBC Flying Oyster and their regional rivals Gen.G to face off against T1 in the grand finals. Their journey through the Swiss Stage was followed by some keen-eyed Korean fans, who cheered them on and perhaps saw the potential of the roster.
Over on the Vietnamese-language LoL Esports VN channel, the first game of the event between VKS and TSW again recorded the highest engagement. This time, it was the only match with an Active-Chatters-to-Viewers ratio of above 1% from all three selected channels, highlighting the power and passion of this Asian LoL esports audience.
While the LoL Esports and LCK channels sported a more international mix of teams in the top matches, the LoL Esports VN fans viewers were less quiet about their favourite squad. Secret Whales enjoyed a wave of support from local Vietnamese fans, who consistently cheered on their matches ahead of the competition.
While we might usually think of Korean, American or European League of Legends fans as tribal and exclusively cheering for their top region, Vietnam more accurately represented this sporting mentality. Viewers of the LoL Esports VN channel were vocal and active in their support of local team Secret Whales, dissimilar to Korean fans who were shyer about cheering for T1.
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