Worlds 2023 reached highest group stage viewership in the history of the series
As Worlds 2023 proceeds through its Swiss Stage, the viewership for the League of Legends World Championship continues to rise. On the second day of the Swiss Stage Group, October 20th, the event reached a new peak as a figure of 1.8 million concurrent viewers was recorded.
Viewership for Worlds events has grown consistently every year, and the current event series Peak Viewers record is set at 5.14 million, achieved during the Grand Final of Worlds 2022. By analysing past data of Worlds viewership, we can confirm that Worlds 2023 is on track to possibly set a new Peak Viewers record for both the Worlds series and esports event live-streaming.
The second day of the Swiss Stage at Worlds 2023 hosted the first clash of the Korean titans, as Gen.G faced off against T1. Both are hugely popular teams in both the local Korean scene as well as internationally, and the popularity of these teams helped boost Worlds 2023 to the next level.
1.84M Peak Viewers was recorded for the Korean derby, and it marked the first time at Worlds 2023 that Korean was the most popular language. Korean-language viewership was low during the Play-In stage, unsurprisingly as no Korean teams participated, but now that the main event has kicked off, it has been able to show its potential.
Another knock-on effect of the Korean derby match was that AfreecaTV saw an uptick in its proportion of the PV figure. AfreecaTV is a South Korean live-streaming platform and its viewership proportion slightly increased during the Play-In stage of 2023 when compared to Worlds 2022. The match between Gen.G and T1 gave a significant boost to the popularity of this platform, and AfreecaTV’s contribution to total PV rose by 5% when compared to the 2023 Play-In.
However, Korean audiences were not the sole reason for the high viewership at Worlds. English-language viewership was also especially high, and the match between EMEA #1 G2 Esports and China #4 Weibo Gaming recorded 1.48M PV: meaning it was more popular than any match during the Worlds 2022 Group Stage. This is especially impressive considering we cannot include data recorded by Chinese live-streaming platforms, due to the unreliability of the statistics.
Although the match between GAM Esports and Fnatic was popular, Vietnamese viewership is at the lowest it has been since Day 4 of the Play-In. We speculated that Vietnamese viewership would likely be a driving force behind the viewership of Worlds 2023, but for today this viewership fell. GAM Esports are now 0-2 in the Swiss Stage group, and if they continue to struggle in matches, interest from Vietnamese audiences in the event may dwindle.
Worlds 2023 is already more popular than Worlds 2016, and the main event has barely begun. Viewership for Worlds 2023 is already extremely high, and the powerful start of its viewership in the Swiss Stage bodes well for the Playoffs viewership of the event.
Korean audiences have once again proven they’re one of the most powerful sources of viewership for League of Legends, but the contributions of English and other languages are not to be underestimated. Stay up to date with the latest viewership statistics of Worlds 2023 with the tournament page, where our PRO subscribers have extra access to advanced statistics.
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