PCS Spring 2024 breaks viewership records thanks to inclusion of Japanese teams in Playoffs

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The Pacific Championship Series was created by Riot Games in late 2019, aiming to shape the game’s Asian regional esports scene. In late 2022, the Oceania region joined the PCS, and in late 2023, Japan was also integrated into the circuit. Oceania joining the PCS was already significant for the league’s viewership, but Japan’s integration has boosted the league’s viewership to never-before-seen heights. 

The recent PCS Spring 2024 season was outright the most-watched and most popular split of the circuit’s history. The Japanese teams in the league are contributing significantly to the viewership of the circuit, and this was reflected in the viewership statistics for Japanese-language broadcasts covering the esports circuit.

  Viewership statistics of PCS Spring 2024   

In total, the PCS Spring 2024 split collected 6.46M Hours Watched. The split was also the longest-running split the PCS had ever seen before, breaking records at over 174 hours of Airtime. The long structure of the event combined with high average viewership meant that the split was by far the most-watched one ever. The next-best split was the Summer 2023 season, which received 2.72M Hours Watched fewer than the recent Spring 24 split.

Chinese remains the event’s most popular language, however, Japanese is quickly catching up. Previously, the PCS was largely a monolingual league in terms of viewership. Chinese-language viewership was crucial to the league, and often contributed well over 90% of the peak viewers for the league, and although Japanese broadcasts have not dethroned Chinese viewership, it was quite close. 

As it stands, the League of Legends Japan League holds its events alongside the PCS. The Playoffs of these LJL splits act as qualifiers for the PCS’ own Playoffs stage. This means the main season of the PCS did not receive any Japanese-language coverage, but when the Japanese teams arrived for Playoffs, the language rivaled the viewership of Chinese-language broadcasts. One knock-on effect of this is that the LJL has received significantly less viewership for its Playoffs stage, as it now acts as a gateway to the PCS Playoffs. 

Most popular & most-watched PCS seasons

The PCS Spring 2024 became the most popular PCS season ever. Comparing the viewership achieved by the recent split to the other most popular splits in the league’s history, the difference is night and day. The integration of Japanese and Oceanic teams to the PCS’ Playoffs stage has been a major success for the Pacific circuit.

The Summer 23 split received higher viewership than previous seasons thanks to the interest of English-speaking Oceanic fans, and the Spring 24 split pushed this effect even further with the inclusion of Japanese fans. The PCS is one of League of Legends’ healthiest circuits, and Riot Games is paying particular attention to the circuit and developing it into a major audience for the game. 

The PCS Spring 24 season broke viewership records for the regional circuit, and the effect of Japanese audiences lies are the core of this growth. The PCS will likely continue to enjoy high viewership thanks to the integration of these audiences, especially during Playoffs, but whether it will be able to consistently reach over 100K concurrent viewers in 2024 is something to keep an eye on.