Worlds 2025 Knockout Stage opened to 18% higher peak viewers thanks to Gen.G and HLE derby

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Kicking off the Knockout Stage stage for the LoL 2025 World Championship, a Korean derby quarterfinal collected millions of concurrent viewers, starting things off strong for League of Legends esports’ ultimate event. Compared to last year, Worlds 2025’s first playoffs match opened to a strong peak, but the story is not as simple as an increasing peak metric.

Starting the quarterfinals at Worlds 2025, Korean teams Gen.G Esports and Hanwha Life Esports came together for a fantastical best-of-five derby. For most of this year, Gen.G have looked unstoppable, claiming victory after victory both regionally and internationally. Their momentum has yet to slow down, and they comfortably took a 3:1 win over their regional rivals, HLE, at Worlds.

The peak excitement for Gen.G vs. HLE settled at just under 2,200,000 Peak Viewers (PV) during the final moments of the match — if the match had continued to the final map, viewership could well have crested close to 2,500,000 PV, a significant improvement over Worlds 2024’s opening quarterfinal, which received 1,858,456 PV. However, the match featured two Chinese teams, and we cannot track viewership data for Chinese livestreaming platforms

Gen.G’s victory over HLE to open the playoffs stage was one of the most popular matches of Worlds 2025. Their game was only second to matches featuring regional rivals and global superstars T1, who is scheduled to play Anyone’s Legend on October 31. Before this highlight-in-the-making, there are two other quarterfinals of action to check out; visit the Worlds 2025 schedule page for more information about upcoming matches.