LCS Spring 2023 — how successful was the start of the new season?

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January 26 marked the start of the North American LoL league, in which the best teams of the region compete for $200K and two slots at MSI 2023. In the new article, Esports Charts will talk about the results of the first day of LCS Spring 2023, and also compare its viewership statistics with the last year's season.

At first glance, the format of the LCS has not changed much, but there are a couple of extremely important innovations. This time, the two best teams from North America will advance to the Mid-Season Invitational: the champion will go straight to the playoffs of the tournament, and the silver medalist will start from the Play-In.

But perhaps the most important change is related to the schedule. LCS Spring 2023 group stage matches are played on weekdays, not on weekends as they used to be. For this reason, the league risks decreasing in viewership.

Results of the first day of LCS Spring 2023

Evil Geniuses, the champion of last year's split, started the new season with a victory over the Golden Guardians, while the vice-champion 100 Thieves lost to Cloud9. At the same time, Team Liquid, which was ranked third at the LCS Spring 2022, lost to FlyQuest, which many call the potential champion of the league in 2023. In addition, Counter Logic Gaming defeated Dignitas and TSM defeated Immortals.

Viewership statistics

In total, five matches of the first day of LCS Spring 2023 generated more than 775K Hours Watched and attracted 127.4K Average Viewers. The Peak Viewers mark was just under 178.8K viewers and was reached during Cloud9's opening match against 100 Thieves.

Compared to the results of the first day of last year's spring split, LCS Spring 2023 started much worse. The league's Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers decreased by 18.6%, 12.6%, and 12%, respectively.

Day one metrics decreased even though the total number of channels broadcasting the first day of LCS Spring more than tripled thanks to community casters. The most popular unofficial channels were IWDominate, imls, and sneakylol, representing Cloud9.

It should be mentioned that the official broadcasts of the spring split are now available only on the LCS channels (Twitch and YouTube). This time the league is not covered on the Riot Games Twitch channel and the LoL Esports YouTube channel, but their contribution to the viewership statistics was minimal even in the past tournaments of the series.

The decision to move LCS Spring matches from weekends to weekdays was negatively received by the league's social media audience. Many viewers do not have the opportunity to watch tournament broadcasts according to the new schedule, and the league's falling numbers are clear evidence of this. It remains to be hoped that Riot Games has the plan to improve the situation.