LEC and LCS Group Stages Summer 2020-2021: Tournaments Results and Viewership Stats

The regular season of the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) and the League Championship Series (LCS) summer splits have concluded, with both tournaments currently heading to their finals. It’s the only way for European and North American teams to earn a spot in the 2021 World Championship, so the competition is naturally fierce and thrilling.

It’s become almost a tradition for us to pit the viewership performances of LCS and LEC against each other to determine which region’s audience is more devoted when it comes to the League of Legends esports. By the same token, this article concerns the viewership statistics of group stages of both championships, compares them and analyses the results with regards to the previous LoL Spring split.

Europe is still in the lead

Just like in the previous Spring 2021 and Summer 2020 seasons, the European region is substantially ahead in viewership, with over 20M Hours Watched generated during the 100 hours of the LEC Summer 2021 regular season broadcasts.

The regular season broadcasts of the North American LCS Summer 2021 generated 17.8M Hours Watched, which is 11% less HW than the European competition. Moreover, the fact that the group stages of the LCS summer split aired for 59 hours more than the LEC summer split makes Europe’s leadership even more significant.

The highest peak of 391K concurrent viewers was reached during the very first LEC match between G2 Esports and MAD Lions. Note that the highest peak in each week of the 8-week-long competition was reached during a match that involved G2, which demonstrates the team’s high popularity among the European audience. This is not a surprising development, considering that G2 are eight-time LEC champions, yet this time around, the team shockingly ended up second in the regular-season standings.

The LCS Summer split saw the highest peak on the third day of the tournament, during the Cloud9 vs. Team Liquid match, when a total of 262K Peak Viewers tuned in to spectate the competition. This makes a lot of sense, given that this was a rematch of the LCS Spring 2021 grand final.

The most popular team of the North American event by Peak Viewers was TSM, who figured in 7 out of 9 LCS matches with the highest viewer count. The first-placed TSM are long-term favourites of the North American audience and just like G2, they will have to earn their spot in the Worlds through the loser’s playoff bracket.

Europe was ahead also in the Average Viewers indicator, with 200K people on average spectating the LEC Summer 2021 group stages. That’s 43.7% more than the 112K Average Viewers who spectated the LCS Summer 2021 group stages.

Decreasing viewership

Compared to the previous Spring 2021 season, there’s a visible decrease in viewership by both, Average Viewers and Peak Viewers metrics. Because the playoff stage of neither of the competitions has concluded yet, we took into account viewership results of the spring and summer split group stages week by week.

The decline of viewership is more significant in the European league, which hasn’t surpassed its numbers from the previous season in neither of 8 weeks of regular season matches. Compared to LEC Spring 2021, the highest weekly peak during LEC Summer 2021 regular season went down on average by 33.59%. When it comes to the Average Viewers count, the amount of weekly AV decreased on average by 29.33%.

The audience of the North American league showed to be a bit more persisting, with the first week of the LCS Summer split actually surpassing the first week of the LCS Spring 2021 in both Peak Viewers (4.68%) and Average Viewers (2.31%) counts. On average, the highest weekly peak decreased by 18.26%, while the amount of weekly Average Viewers decreased by 20.67%.

The audience gap is shrinking

As shown above, Europe vs. North America LoL viewership rivalry continues with Europe remaining the leader. Although LCS is behind, the viewership gap has shrunk compared to Spring 2021, when LEC’s audience was about double the LCS’s. It is worth mentioning that in terms of viewership, the recent LEC spring split was an exceptionally successful event that took place during the wave of pandemic-induced lockdowns across Europe.

On the contrary, the situation improved rapidly during summer, which might have had a negative impact on the LEC’s viewership numbers. Also we should not forget about UEFA EURO 2020, which was postponed to summer 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe during 2020.

That said, it might be too soon to jump to conclusions, as the final playoff matches are still yet to be played. Playoffs and grand final matches commonly attract the highest volumes of spectators, therefore the overall indicators will expectedly rise with the conclusion of both events.