EU vs NA: Who was the best at spending the first week of 2020?

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The holywars tend to revolve around the Europe vs North America LoL conflict quite often, and today we will be adding more fuel to the fire.

The article will cover the first week of the League of Legends 2020 esports season's spring split. Namely, we will discuss the regional championships for Europe (LEC) and America (LCS). These will be compared by the peak viewers and average viewers indicators.

In 2020, we didn't find the statistics tilting solely to the side of a single championship. So far, the North American competition is the winner when it comes to the peak viewers, while LEC excels at the average viewers figure.

It should be noted that both of the peak viewers marks were obtained at the second gaming day. In the case of LCS, it was due to the return of the already famous Immortals. Before, Riot Games didn't allow the organization to enter LCS, but after the acquisition of OpTic Gaming the latter's slot was also transferred to the Immortals.

When it comes to the European counterpart, the peak viewers mark was achieved not during the most important match, which was likely caused by the weekend factor. The second gaming day was on Saturday, allowing more people to watch the championship. LCS had similar state of affairs as well.

In case we consider a long-term result over the momentary one, the victory goes to the LEC Spring Split. The gap between the tournaments reaches 13% in favor of the European one, which can be partially attributed to the schedule problems.

The matches of the American CET league start late in the evening, while the matches of the European league begin in the afternoon based on the American timezone(s). This amounts to the LEC having a more comfortable schedule and hence a larger potential audience as well, which is also something that's confirmed by the shared audience (with the 42.2% of the LCS viewers watching the LEC matches as well).

Now, how did this affect the average viewers indicator? In case of Europe the top spot went to Fnatic with its 257 thousand viewers. This is also not the first time for the team to overtake its rivals from G2. In 2019, the same team was also the most popular LEC participant.

On the other hand, the American counterpart attributes the majority of the viewer interest to the league's "newcomers", the Immortals. This team has gathered 254 thousand average viewers, surpassing the current LCS champions by a wide margin. As for the Liquid themselves, their position in the top was not high at all, amounting to the seventh spot.