LCK Summer 2023 viewership statistics with new all time record

The Summer regional league for Korean League of Legends has come to an end and a champion has been crowned. Gen.G Esports triumphed over T1 in the Grand Finals and viewership reached an all-new peak for the regional league series.

The rivalry of Gen.G and T1 is one that has come to define the LCK, and season after season these two face off against each other, usually generating the most popular match of the league. However, this season wasn’t as simple for T1 as past seasons have been, as Faker took a break from esports competitions due to health issues. T1 was only 5th in the league table after 9 weeks of Group Stage matches, but they managed to win four playoffs matches to secure their Grand Finals spot.

LCK Summer 2023 Viewership statistics

Since starting in early June, the event has consistently accumulated watch time week after week. Now, at the end of the Summer season, the event has accumulated 62.2M Hours Watched in total. Despite the event’s recording-breaking peak viewership, Average Viewers were surprisingly low for the season. Compared to the Spring season of this year, the LCK Summer 2023 received roughly 20K fewer viewers on average throughout, but the playoffs stage is what dragged the Summer 2023 league ahead.

The LCK Summer 2023 reached a Peak Viewers of 1.52M fans during the Grand Finals. This concurrent viewership peak is an all-time record for the LCK; compounded with the fact that the LCK is the most popular regional league in the world per peak concurrent viewers, this means the LCK Summer 2023 set an all-time record for Peak Viewers across all regional leagues. The peak concurrent viewers figure of 1.52M is only bested by Mid-Season Invitationals and World Championships.

YouTube was the most popular platform for the LCK Summer 2023, receiving just over half of all viewership in terms of watch time. The official Korean-language broadcasts are hosted on the red platform, alongside official broadcasts in other Asian languages. There is an English-speaking YouTube broadcast for the league, but Twitch reigns supreme when it comes to English-speaking audiences.

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Of particular interest for our PRO subscribers are the other platforms that feature in this graphic. A Korean live-streaming platform and an online TV broadcast were present in our data, and combined they almost equalled the viewership on streaming giant Twitch. Compared to last year’s platforms data, the 2023 season received a much more diverse viewership from various platforms and broadcasts.

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Most popular teams of LCK Summer 2023 by Average Viewers

T1 was the most popular team of the event when sorted by Average Viewers, and not by a small margin. Even when excluding T1 as an outlier, the spread across the Average Viewers for top teams remains dynamic.

Between second and fifth place in this ranking, there was a drop of almost 40% in Average Viewers. In fact, the fifth-ranked team’s Average Viewers count falls below the average number of concurrent viewers recorded for the entire season. Compared to other disciplines, for example, CS:GO, the LCK Summer 2023 showcased an extremely top-heavy distribution of Average Viewers.

Comparison of LCK seasons

Comparison of the most popular LCK Splits, per Peak Viewers Comparison of most popular LCK Splits

Looking at the most popular LCK Splits of all time, it's clear to see the series has been consistently growing in viewership over the last few years. Just earlier this year, the LCK Spring 2023 achieved a record-breaking Peak Viewers of 1.46M.

Excluding the Summer 2022 Split, each season has seen growth in terms of peak concurrent viewers since the Summer 2021 split. Two years of consistent viewership is no small feat; League of Legends continues to prove it's not only one of the biggest disciplines in esports but that it still has room to grow.

Although four out of the five most popular games for these Splits have been a T1 vs Gen.G matchup, this isn’t proof of them being the most popular teams on their own merits. Each of the most popular matches per Peak Viewers in this figure was a Grand Finals match, which itself is a key factor in amassing viewership and concurrent viewers. In fact, the only match that doesn’t feature Gen.G, the LCK Summer 2021 most popular match, featured Dplus facing off against T1 in the Grand Finals of this season.

Now that the LCK Summer 2023 season is behind us, Gen.G has officially qualified for the 2023 World Championship as Summer Split champions. Despite losing the Grand Finals match, T1 also qualified for the World Championship due to accumulating the most Championship Points throughout the Spring and Summer Splits out of the remaining teams.

The final two spots for Korean teams at the World Championship will be decided by the LCK Regional Finals 2023. The tournament sees the four teams with the highest Championship Points who haven’t yet qualified for the World Championship battle it out. The qualifier takes place this weekend from the 25th to the 27th of August and will determine the last two teams from Korea to take part in the ultimate event of the year. KT Rolster, Hanwha Life Esports, Dplus, and DRX are all confirmed to take part and you can follow the action live on the official LCK channels.