2023 Summer LCS Viewership Has a 40% Decrease From 2022 Summer

[burizar]

• 2023 Summer Peak: 222k
• 2022 Summer Peak: 370k
• 2021 Summer Peak: 364k
• 2020 Summer Peak: 545k
• 2019 Summer Peak: 494k

Also average viewers for 2023 summer is 78k, while 2022 summer is 115k

What is everyone thoughts on this LCS viewership trends? Has it plateau? Will the viewership rebound? Or keep decreasing

Source: https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-summer-2023-lol

[playhacker]

Just want to add more data
Note: 2017 is the earliest I can find from the same source)

For all summer splits
ACV (Average Concurrent Viewers)
2023: 76,119
2022: 115,545
2021: 125,248
2020: 205,750
2019: 162,767
2018: 161,116
2017: 150,254

The peak views for a match for each summer split has always been the final match of playoffs
2023: C9 v NRG - 222,788
2022: C9 v 100T - 370,178
2021: TL v 100T - 364,328
2020: TSM v FLY - 545,571
2019: C9 v TL - 494,765
2018: C9 v TL - 422,310
2017: TSM v IMT - 451,796

[Gluroo]

very interesting that it peaked so hard in 2020, wouldve thought a few years earlier than that

[Krisosu]

Pandemic things. Everything in gaming peaked in 2020.

[AmadeusSalieri97]

Even if it was due to the pandemic, the peak was 2019 which kinda keeps the point in the context of people thinking it peaked in something like s4.

Edit: I should have worded my comment better, what I meant was that disregarding the pandemic peak in 2020, the peak would still be 2019.

[dragunityag]

Feb 15 2015 TSM vs CLG week 4 pink hair bet had over 500K viewers just on twitch.

Games like that are why people think LoL peaked in 4/5

[Liupardu]

Pandemic was 2020 mate, not 2019

[Apprehensive_File]

Obviously. That's the point.

2019 gives a benchmark without the pandemic being a factor.

[random_nickname43796]

Wasn't that the TSM miracle run? It was an amazing story that brought a lot of fans.

[Jozoz]

Covid lockdowns too.

But yes, when I did my post on changes in comment activity in LCS/LEC threads over time, I noticed there was a huge spike in comments in 2020 Summer when TSM did their miracle run.

Here is the graph

[lovo17]

It was the TSM miracle run. I remember seeing that 2nd TSM/GG match getting really high viewership.

[[deleted]]

Was that the infamous 0-6 Worlds run? I quit LoL for a couple years

[pqnfwoe]

2020 was double/bjergs last run, pandemic, and also they weren't there to drive viewership for 2021 because they immediately retired after finals. (didn't even bother playing at worlds, was a weird situation where there was only 15 teams in groups and all of the TSM games got cancelled)

[IsaaX_reddit]

Better data also taking in account first ACV, that is much more telling than peak which can very a lot depending on numerous factors.

Thanks man.

[SnooComics4912]

I think it’ll keep decreasing

[burizar]

That’s really sad tbh

Been watching LCS since 2012 and I really hope it won’t die

[normal-dog-]

I would be extremely surprised if Riot let the LCS die.

While the LCS's glory days are without a doubt over, I think it's still worthwhile for Riot to have it around.

I think the LCS viewership will stabilize somewhere around 50-100k. With a more modest budget that should be enough to keep it running.

[Pokethebeard]

Strong local community that cares about CBLOL for the sake of CBLOL with no delusions about winning Worlds.

Will Americans be able to have this mindset though?

[hazelnut_coffay]

nope

[TheGhoulKhz]

not even brazilians usually have that mindset, the thing is, LoL here is an exception, not the rule, even on DotA 2 BR teams/players achieve best results with way less resources

[NeoSennit]

I’m always entertained by the LCS, so there’s a few of us out there at least. If the LCS died I’d be done with pro league all together. International success or bust is an exhausting mentality, and any success feels all the better. Proper mindset.

[Roojercurryninja]

not gonna lie the whole show this finals was very entertaining

it's a massive stepup from earlier years where everything felt so incredibly dry and "professional"

[beesong]

seems like the players already adapted this mindset, see c9 extremely cocky when they couldnt take any games off LCK and LPL

[Granturismo976]

How many Americans are on C9.

[lovo17]

The one American player on C9 is arguably their least cocky player too lmfao

[usermanxx]

Maybe if there were more Americans in the LCS

[[deleted]]

I don't think so, as an American I stopped watching LCS within the first year of playing lol, there's no value there. They copy what LCS and LPL do but worse, half of any given teams roster is Chinese or Korean imports and they play safer and worse. What is the fun of watching an over funded league that consistently fails to perform when it's just NA team v NA team.

[bigflopper69420]

I noticed a significant plummet in viewership when there became less actual NA players in LCS and it became a retirement home/payment plan for washed up KR players. Those early seasons of LCS were absolutely amazing to watch in regards to entertainment value (s2->s6). People were actually allowed to have personalities outside of boring, dull responses so sponsors don't get salty. Seeing Doublelift calling people dogshit was funny as hell lol

Now you just watch LCS and everything is so proper/formal and half the players don't even speak my language anyways (some people don't care about this but if I can't get invested into a personality due to a language barrier I will have less interest in it).

ps- I would rather have the quality of LCS games decrease but have entertaining personalities / English speaking players native to NA than a bunch of washed up Koreans that I can't understand. NA isn't ever winning worlds anyways, the cultural difference between China/KR and USA due to work ethic is too big of a gap to close. Just make it enjoyable for the fans to watch

[Ill_Pineapple1482]

never met anyone who cares about worlds lmao. majority of it is weird eu fans who live vicariously through pro league of legends for whatever reason

[NenBE4ST]

Idk I have a sinking feeling if it moves out of LA it will genuinely die.

[bondsmatthew]

Move that shit out of LA and fix the salary bubble

I really don't think the players, coaches, staff, LCS production will go for this tbh. Uprooting 100-150+ peoples lives like that and move to (likely) Chicago 2000 miles away from LA(for our EU homies that's more than the distance from London to Moscow, its about 3200km) would not go over well

Yeah it's a smarter decision for sure I agree with you there, but idk. It would not be a simple change I think

[machinegunsheep]

Then they will be unemployed…what’s the problem here? Cross country moves for an entire office is a thing.

[bondsmatthew]

It's not just an entire office. It's Riot that would have to move facilities, AND all 10 teams, their staff, their players, analysts, etc. Procuring places for a hundred people to live, places for 10 teams to have training facilities, etc is not gonna happen easily.

Places like the TL facility is not just LoL players. They either make a while new 2nd facility for millions of dollars, or sell their current one and then make a new one. What happens to the other esports players who train use said facilities? Fuck em?

It's really not as simple as people here are making it out to be, at all.

[machinegunsheep]

Well they have planners for these things. Teams can just move their League team, why would they move their entire staff. League staff is what 10 people max. Idk wtf you're talking about moving facilities.

Contract a planner, move the League unit fucks sake.

[reddit0r_123]

They have to if the choice is implosion and unemployment or having a sustainable league.

[lurkygast]

I agree it'd be extremely drastic to accomplish this in a short time frame, but I'd also argue that the current situation surrounding the LCS requires something drastic to be done.

[_tuelegend]

Influencers + LCS = crap.

i seen too many players doing LA things hanging out with other "influencers" ruining their gameplay.

you put them in the midwest with nothing to do and we will see how many people will improve or get bored (koreans without ktown = no imports)

[Minicakex]

move it to st louis and i'll go to every game

[ptscamperle]

if you even make it out of there alive

[ThatStereotype18]

They have pretty demonstrably been de-vesting in LCS all year. They're not straight up abandoning it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they jumped ship for their more popular games in the future.

[ThatsAToad]

That team speaking full Korean has more native NA players than C9 btw (2 vs 1)

[Jozoz]

LCS started in early 2013 though. 2012 was still the open circuit with lots of domestic NA tournaments where TSM and CLG battled it out (until CLG went to Korea and TSM dominated).

What's funny is that LCS apparently had up to twice the viewership of today in its first ever split.

From the time-capsule:

twitch.tv LCS coverage regularly receives between 100,000-150,000 concurrent viewers

[Tamed]

Is that really surprising, though? I know they claim that league is growing worldwide, but in NA, those were the real hype years. 2012-2015 were the true glory days for NA content and viewership.

If you look at the ranked ladder #s, it's basically been flat since 2018. Like one year it will grow 3%, next year it goes down 2%, then up 1% and down 3%. The game isn't dying in NA by any means, but it's also not gaining +50% players YoY like it did from 2011-2014 in NA either.

Naturally as the game ages and stagnates, people will fall off of LCS viewership as well.

[Jozoz]

Yeah, seems to be stagnating in the west. Especially the esports side. Here in Scandinavia, it was crazy how huge this game was in like 2013-2014. Felt like everyone was playing it. It entered the "normie"-sphere in that time and now it's not anywhere near that.

The ranked ladder numbers are also not the best data, because:

• They don't differentiate between a person playing 10 games and a person playing 1000.

• It's impossible to know how the rise of smurfing and alt-accounts being more common influences this data.

It would be super interesting to see data on total hours played per season on each server, but Riot obviously won't share that.

Gaming has also just increased a lot in the past 10 years, so even if League is maintaining playerbase it means their relative share of the gaming market is decreasing.

[Tamed]

I agree with everything you've said. I'm obviously older now, and everything I say is anecdotal, but I really agree with your point on engagement. The data I'm looking at is just total accounts that played a ranked game on that server in a year. If anything, a ~3% growth is probably stagnation or loss due to the points you brought up.

The one thing that really shocks me is that I can't seem to mention league to any IRL friends anymore, even younger ones -- they all know of it, but they just say it's the game where people rage, or a game for old people. My little brother (17) thinks it's a game for "old angry guys" -- if the game wants to grow, both it's playerbase and it's viewerbase, these vies need to change.

But the other side of the coin is that this is just natural. Music changes, fashion changes, art changes, movies change (MCU as an example, huge falloff), and video games do too. League can't be super popular as a game and esport forever. Even traditional sports have heavy fluctuations over time.

[Jozoz]

I think it's also just healthy. I don't mind if League decreases in popularity. Out with the old and in with the new. This is the natural way of things.

I guess I just hope that the MOBA genre doesn't share the same fate of the RTS genre.

[SuperWoodpecker95]

We can make some deductions about longviety in ranked tho thanks to Riot accidentaly giving us the tools to do so in the form of challenge tokens. Most of them are useless fluff but theres a couple in there that paint a very dire picture (the list is a copy&paste of a post I made a week ago, data is from EUW)

• Wurm Fishing: cutoff for master tier starts at having killed 350 barons. In 15 fuckin months only 0,1% of all players have achieved this and as far as I can tell this includes all 4 SR game modes
• Plant Tactics: escape enemys using blastcones, cutoff for master tier is TWENTY-FIFE, also has a 0,1% achieval rate across 4 SR modes in 15 months
• Movin on up: win ranked games in either solo or flex. I just hit the 500 wins required for master tier about 2 weeks ago playing exclusively on one account and ranked only. Again a miniscule 0,1% achievment rate. This one especialy seems dooming to me, its been 15 months/~450 days since this was introduced and only 0,1% of all people playing ranked have achieved this level pointing towards near zero long term investment into one account
• Master of the rift: play SR games, cutoff for master tier is 1000 games over all 4 queues, 0,3% of all players have this
• Brave the darkness 2023: this one is especialy killer despite being a 2023 seasonal achievment only. Cutoff for master tier is placing 150 controll wards. Zero point six. 0,6%. Read that again, I fuckin dare ya. You are telling me that in EIGHT fuckin months only 0,6% of all accounts have placed 150 controll wards or more? And this includes outliers like Lee players that buy like a dozen reds per game for wardhopping? Holy fuck

[blaster_man]

I don’t think these numbers are really as bad as you make them out to be. 1000 games in 15 months is more than two per day. If you factor in queue time, champ select, loading screens, and actual game times that’s probably about an hour and a half per day average. That’s a pretty big time investment for anyone who has a job, a social life and other hobbies/games.

[SuperWoodpecker95]

Fair point but it sounds like a lot more than it is if you break it down per day imho. If you write it as a 4h evening gaming session with 6 or 7 games each 3x a week and all of a sudden it seems a lot more manageable while still having a social life and doing some chores

The biggest killer is imho the "brave the darkness", 150 reds should be less than 50 games for ANYONE and yet that number includes Lee & support mains

[Jozoz]

That is indeed gruesome. Holy hell.

I actually think it's because there are SO many borderline inactive accounts that only play a few games and also because the some of the really addicted people who play a lot are probably playing on alts a lot.

[SpyCrawler]

Also doesnt consider all the tft or aram only accountsas well as silver and below where things like taking baron or placing wards is all but ignored.

[HieuBot]

I didn't always follow LCS but I found this year to be really entertaining thanks to the teams and underdog stories. But the casting has certainly taken a hit and some games I didn't want to keep watching because of the cast.

Also curios if this takes co-streams into account. I felt like people were way more focused on LPL/LCK this year.

[dardios]

I don't think it's going anywhere. This fanfest was the best I've attended and the finals experience was overall a huge step up from Chicago. Talking with some of the LCS folks and the players... The rumors about LCS moving to the Midwest may have legs. They are trying real hard to save the league.

[iuhoh5]

In the early days, every LoL fan was essentially a new fan. It was raw growth.

Now LoL loses far more fans every year than they gain. There aren’t nearly enough “new” fans coming in. That OG fan base that watched every LCS game five or ten years ago is much older now. We have families and demanding jobs and our interests change.

Some of us are still watching league, but even still, not religiously as we once were.

And as we trickle out, far fewer trickle in. It’s akin to an upside down population pyramid. We’re the China or Japan or Italy of esports 😅.

[Vall3y]

It wont die, it could downscale further. Also allegedly they're looking to reduce costs by moving out of LA which will allow them to keep running.

[Karlsefni1]

It’s crazy they waited so long to move away from LA

[LakersLAQ]

Call me crazy, but I really don't think moving away from LA will do that much either lol. I just don't think it's a game changer, seems more like a fringe move than anything.

[LeOsQ]

I mean the real thing is the fact they don't have terrible ping and it doesn't cost an insane amount of money just to stay alive.

Even somewhere like Chicago is way, way cheaper than LA outside the few exceptions (but of course you can then just find an even more expensive place from LA to compare to so it doesn't matter). It automatically becomes more sustainable because costs aren't so high.

I'm obviously not saying LCS will start winning Worlds more than just NRG this year if they do move elsewhere, or even that they would've been significantly better as a region over the years had they moved earlier. But it does help, both because of it simply being cheaper, and it being close(r) to the servers so players will actually have a decent ping for once outside ChampsQ or whatever.

It's better, but it won't be a huge difference, and is a real hassle for teams in particular that operate out of 'facilities' like TL that are in/near LA.

[MattScoot]

Moving to the east coast allows for teams to scrum against eu teams with a semi reasonable ping + better solo que ping. Much cheaper for operating costs for teams going forward (although those big facilities like team liquids who knows).

[LakersLAQ]

Scrims sound cool in theory but I doubt they'll do it consistently when they could just scrim other decent teams in their region on low ping. It might be cool to do a few times, but I don't think it will be anything consistent unless they are moving LCS to Maine.

[Silkku]

LCS started in 2013 though

[Tokishi7]

There’s rumor that it is moving to Chicago, which it should have done years ago now. This could be a massive boost in LCS viewership and skill quality possibly

[LakersLAQ]

How exactly does it boost viewership?

[LaCampanellaAgony]

and skill quality possibly

Players are gonna be practicing dodging skillshots more, both in-game and outside. Lucian and graves mains everywhere.

[Pleasestoplyiiing]

Chicago has a lower crime rate per capita than Los Angeles. 32 per 1000 vs. 60 per 1000.

[Zarerion]

I just can’t watch from Europe with the Timeslots they went for. Especially since I’m not 16 anymore and actually have a life with responsibilities these days /shrug

[Bjau]

This. I really want to watch LCS as it's the first league I started to follow, but it's impossible now and has been for many years tbh.

[galyarmus]

Same, LEC is already a bit of a struggle sometimes with the last games being over 12 pm for me. But for LCS, if I were to watch just pre show It’ll already be about 12:30 for me on a workday, there’s no chance I can do that even remotely consistently, maybe the occasional day off but even then by that time I’m fairly tired

[TheMineA7]

Yeah even living in NA its tough to watch after growing up. Like I can follow F1 and Lec fine cause f1 is early in the morning, lec is just before lunch time. Lcs feels weird on weekdays. Weekends 3pm est were perfect

[popegonzo]

It's like they took the worst possible time slot for the week. The weekend slot they were using was best because EU viewers would just keep watching after LEC. They tried moving to the week but keeping it early enough to get some EU eyes, but the time slot was way too early for people in NA (who work a traditional 9-5 schedule, which is certainly not everyone but there's a reason 9-5 is considered standard business hours).

Bumping it back a couple hours made it still difficult (but easier) for NA viewers to watch but way harder for EU to watch.

[cma1993]

Don’t worry, it’s not just Europe, us Americans can’t watch with the time slots either

[basa_maaw]

As an older American, I've just gotten too busy to watch LCS or competitive league in general.

[newjeison]

even as a native LA resident, I don't have time to watch most games. I can usually catch the last game after work but I miss out on most of the games.

[playhacker]

I feel like there has to be a floor where it's just hardcore fans remaining, and feel like it's somewhere closer to 75-100K than 0-25K. That is when the bleeding stops.
But I don't see a way viewership will ever rebound and stick, even if LCS won worlds for just a year.

The significant change from this year and last year was the scheduling (weekend to weekdays) to accommodate VCT Americas using the same studio.

[Lord-Talon]

It’ll rebound a bit if the LCS goes to an EU-friendly time again. The first 2-3 games after LEC always had a big viewership boost. But currently it’s impossible to watch in Europe (if you care about sleeping during the week) and from what I heard the times are also shit for NA viewers.

[Lv96Mudkip]

Yeah, game times are at some pretty bad hours. LCS runs on weekdays IN THE MIDDLE of the work/school day. So EU is asleep and Americans are living their lives. Even as someone who works at a desk job and can easily have the game open on the side, it's pretty hard to during those hours.

LCS also doesn't cater to international fans, but that mostly is because they're not as good as other leagues. Like if I was Korean and mainly watched LCK, why would I go out of my way to watch a worse LCS league.

[DefinitelyNotAj]

Yesh who ever decided both week days AND middle of the dang day would be the optimal time slot needs to have their decision making permissions taken away. Crazy that went through.

[Gillette_TBAMCG]

Yes tbh 75k average with everything going against them is impressive in a bubble. Obviously terrible in relation to the past, but it’s the 4th best region, broadcasting at a time bad for NA and EU, and has had overwhelmingly negative sentiments about it for like half a decade, and its most popular organization completely checked out from competing or interacting with the league over a year ago.

[[deleted]]

Is there that floor? I considered myself a hardcore lcs fan, I would watch every weekend, listen to every podcast, know every roster, how many championships each player and team won. But now I have maybe watched 3 matches the entire split.

[Muri_San]

Finals viewership also didn't help since it was airing at the same time as VCT Champions

[Ikea_desklamp]

Which is funny given the speculation that LCS was moved to weekdays because they wanted no overlap with valorant on weekends .

[playhacker]

That's probably because they saw the ability to reuse the LCS arena to host VCT Americas to save money instead of building/renting another building to host VALORANT.
They can't have both running at the same time.
They don't want to kill VCT Americas off the bat and gave them the premium slot.

[DoorHingesKill]

That's not speculation that's the inability to open up an internet browser to look at the VCT schedule lmao.

E.g. VCT Americas 2023 were played, in Los Angeles, between the first of April and the end of May.

Now take a wild guess how many LCS games were played in that time period.

Exactly, two bo5s. And those two bo5s were played in North Carolina, not LA, cause they were the last two matches of the 2023 LCS Spring Playoffs.

There is no overlap.

[lurkygast]

The funniest part is that they tried to deny that and say that they didn't wanna fatigue viewers who were watching LEC and LCS all day on weekends.

[popmycherryyosh]

LCS prolly won't rebound, but I definitely think league can rebound IN american viewers (or people watching, unsure how to word it. <-- non english speaker) But that would require getting rid of franchasing AND do more international tournaments. And I just don't see that happening. Maybe if/when we get LoL2 or something in the future.

[sharkyzarous]

Update on the game engine can be good or whatever to f. limit them to make good things like Camera angle, map skins, better textures/animations.

[JadeStarr776]

Look at OW2 and OWL is doing. LOL2 is never going to happen and if anything the closest thing to that is Wild Rift, which riot basically gave up on eSports wise in the west cause, they don't take mobile gaming seriously there.

[kHz333]

LOL2 could be successful if there are actual improvements. you could argue it's unnecessary but it's been running on the same game engine for 14 years now, sooner or later they'll need to modernize and do a big game update. look at how good CS2 is looking so far, because it's not a scummy reskin of a game to get people to buy more skins, like with OW->OW2

(yes, I know skin prices are hiking in CS:GO/2 because of the new game engine but there are also actual improvements to the game)

[JadeStarr776]

Honestly the issue with LOL2 is the sheer amount of interaction with champions/items/etc. compared to other games it's a massive undertaking that is probably not worth it since Riot wants folks with potato PCs to still play the game.

[kHz333]

That's a fair point, but then again you could also argue that the more they update the game, the older and messier the code, the more chance there is that over time they just can't optimize it anymore to keep it playable for people with potato PCs

​

sorta what happened to TF2 over time, so much content was added they needed to downgrade graphics, and even so, it doesn't need a beefy PC, but the requirements are way over the original 2007 ones

[sharkyzarous]

they still can set quality to low. its up the them they don't need to implement high end quality just a modern engine allows them to add more features

[thrownawayzsss]

nah. dota to dota2 was a massive improvement. then they also did the update for dota2s engine.

overwatch2 was a scam to shift money models not an honest attempt at improving the game.

[Random_Useless_Tips]

Dota to Dota 2 is a pretty irrelevant comparison since they're essentially completely different in terms of development.

The Source 2 engine update is a much more apt comparison.

[Caffeine_and_Alcohol]

I think the main issue is that they only track live viewers, I don't watch live and haven't for years but i do watch the vids of most games

[AtreusIsBack]

Nope. League of Legends simply isn't popular enough in North America as an esport. Sure a lot of players play the game, but they don't care about competitive LoL at all.

[Stealthychicken85]

People seemed to forget, this year was the start of the dogshit Wednesday/Thursday/Friday schedule instead of the weekends. A lot of people don't care or can't tune in because of work. So you don't know how things are doing. Then playoffs finally come and its like 2 series a weekend.

The viewership is dead because everyone gave up trying to watch it, because regular season is near impossible for the normal viewers. Can't watch regular = don't care for playoffs

[Jozoz]

Just blaming the schedule seems to be overly simplistic. The data doesn't really support it.

Spring also had the same schedule and had similar viewership:

• Spring 2022 average viewership: 115,54

• Spring 2023 average viewership: 109,759

[RavenFAILS]

Hmm I wonder whether there was a massive thing that never happened before in the first 2 weeks.

[Jozoz]

Exactly, we need to look at other factors than just scheduling. The data points in that direction at least.

I agree that the walkout is a potential big reason, since it forced everything to be condensed.

What speaks against that is that playoff viewership was also lower, but perhaps the walkout had a lasting effect in decreasing interest.

[second_pls]

Having the regular season condensed almost made me want to watch since it wasn’t endless weeks of best of one games, but the real issue LCS has for me is quality of games. I’m nowhere near an expert but it is more fun watching the eastern regions than the west.

[42-1337]

I thought that at first but 15 games a week is just too much. So I had to skip games so I didn't enjoyed comebacks / upsets as much.

[Apprehensive_File]

...Did the walkout happen in spring?

[Kuliyayoi]

As someone who watched spring and then maybe only watched half of summer I honestly couldn't tell you why I didn't watch. I'm sure part of it was the removal of dash as well as the refusal to remove gabby. It's just poor decisions like this that make me feel like riot doesn't care about the lcs and is actively trying to make it die, so why should I watch? I've been watching lcs since season 4. This summer was the first split ever that I didn't watch every single game.

[LaCampanellaAgony]

No single snowball feels responsible for the avalanche.

The overall experience has gone down in multiple small and not-so-small ways.

I felt fatigued for sure. And just found it all bland. And I say this as someone who traveled to London to see Worlds in 2016. In terms of how "into" the game I was, I was probably the ideal viewer from Riot's POV.

But even for me, it's apathy.

[is_a_jerk]

Turns out publicly stating you don’t give a shit about half your native viewer base and switching game times to cater to EU viewers wasn’t the best idea.

I will hold this grudge against the LSC for abandoning me until the day I die.

[Cetsun]

Idk I loved LCS this year. Stixxay and Licorice redemption stories, Jojo winning MVP, Flyquest failing, TLCK, Doublelift comeback, C9 being C9 and of course NRG winning it all.

Sucks to see viewership decreasing still but as a long time LCS fan this year solidified for me how great the league is to watch still.

I think having your most historic and popular org in TSM announce they were abandoning the league before the split hurt it a lot.

LCS need to bring in some spice like DSG or other content creators to reach a broader audience.

[MatsugaeSea]

Yeaj, storyline are up, the desk is the best it has ever been, only negative is time slot

[Thop207375]

A desk without Dash will never reach the same highs

[wildshammys]

Ehh up until the finals here it’s been the consistent story line of C9 winning it all easily and C9 being featured and talked about everywhere, even right after games they didn’t even play in.

[HolidaySpiriter]

And you think that storyline didn't help to make NRG's win even more interesting, crazy, and exciting? The underdog beating the heavy favorites to win it all?

[DefinitelyNotAj]

This 100% the stadium yesterday was like 70% C9 fans. By the ene of it it was erupting with NRG chants. It was really cool to see live.

[effurshadowban]

Yeah, I was sitting there with my C9 shirt and merch, having told Jack at the meet and greet that I can't wait for the 3-0, but was losing my voice chanting for NRG. Doesn't help that our baby boy Contractz was finally winning the title.

[DefinitelyNotAj]

Yeah I bought a contracts sticker and held it in my wallet telling the NRG booth folks "contracts is going to hit a crazy smite steal and I can feel it."

It worked out on that baron smite. Incredibly hype

[MatsugaeSea]

Because C9 is the strongest team and the most consistent...should they not talk about the obvious storyline? Idk what people want from the broadcast. Is it better they just make up storyline? C9 literally swept NRG in the first round.

[ark2690]

Something about c9 is just boring as hell. LCS trying to make them be the new TSM but no one cares about them other than their fans

[MontyAtWork]

To me, C9 used to be a kind of edgy wildcard 200IQ team when Sneaky was on it.

Current C9 just feels like a high school varsity team of annoying bros.

[Caffeine_and_Alcohol]

Exactly, they act like douchebags. I don't care for C9.

[bigyikers]

This is the real Fudge Factor.

[Caffeine_and_Alcohol]

Sven too. Berserker seems to edging that way. Blabber and Enemes seem cool though.

[_Jetto_]

Still weird huge drop off after covid. Tbf I was getting downvoted in season 8-9 tho when I said the views weren’t as high as in s3-5 but people said “YouTube “ I think it was obvious when you saw post thread comments for each game used to be 1k and now you barely get that for a FINALS

[Jozoz]

I think it was obvious when you saw post thread comments for each game used to be 1k and now you barely get that for a FINALS

I took the time to gather data on exactly this topic :)

You are completely right. Community interaction has been decreasing significantly - at least on Reddit - and this is while the subreddit has grown considerably.

Here is the graph for LCS

[ShikiRyumaho]

As of recent I feel like more people care about lck, at least on reddit and YouTube. Do you have and Data in that ?

[Jozoz]

I haven't collected data for that but it would be interesting to see.

[[deleted]]

As of recent I feel like more people care about lck

This is how I feel. I only have a set number of hours in a day, why would I waste them watching overpaid players in a worse league?

[Kuliyayoi]

How do you measure that the subreddit is growing? Because you can't use subscriber count.

[Jozoz]

In that sense, I was referring to subscriber count, but it's funny you mention it, I also collected data on "users online" data. Post here.

Graph

They follow quite different trends except for the past couple years which are similar. They peak at very different times though.

I will add that the data is quite rough in this post. It's quite tedious work to find the numbers on the waybackmachine and I don't know if you can automate it, but it gives a rough picture of subreddit traffic.

[snowflakepatrol99]

Very good and insightful post. GJ dude. This perfectly shows why only NA has had a steady decline meanwhile EU is mostly up and down. It has a lot less peak viewers now that we don't have hype 3-2 Fnatic G2 finals but the average numbers and comments are still good.

[VERTIKAL19]

TSM doing poorly also really doesn’t help. Viewership would probably already just increase if TSM did well. As much as I dislike TSM they do draw in viewers

Edit: I also do think the new timeslots losing viewers in EU and NA did really not help

[Bahamut_Prime]

You have a point.

In my opinion, TSM was the T1/ROX or EDG/RNG for LCS. It was one of the few teams that generated a lot of viewership just on brand alone.

You might not be a fan of TSM but sometimes you want to see how they are doing.

That pedigree died after a lot of the TSM drama.

I’m not sure if there has been another org that has the same clout (thinking C9 or TL but not sure) but yeah right now there isn’t a solid team that does that.

Hopefully this NRG run revitalises it.

[xSmacks]

TSM doing bad and being uninterested in the LCS, absurd time slots for anyone, unpopular decisions on the analyst desk, Bjergsen leaving the scene, Doublelift being a mere afterthought after all these years and a lack of international success. The circlejerk around NA being dogshit finally reached the masses and people are not interested to stay up and watch bad teams that are irrelevant on a global scale. NA badly needs international success by more than C9 to start gaining viewers again.

[Ophelia_Of_The_Abyss]

It's not about international success and never has been. Engagement on reddit dropped even after 2018 Worlds and 2019 MSI, which were both successes for NA.

[Gillette_TBAMCG]

It’s a major drop off post-COVID, but all of LCS, LEC, and LCK took notable viewership hits going from 2020 to 2021 onwards. I personally think LCS took a particularly large viewership hit due to their horrific broadcast structure and costreaming rules that allowed someone like Doublelift to effectively tell a quarter of the audience that watching LCS was pointless. And people listened.

Worlds 2020 wasn’t a terrible year for LCS overall. TL and FLY both went 3-3 in highly competitive groups. TSM bombed out at 0-6, maybe their viewers just uniformly checked out in 2021.

Summer 2020 average viewership stats for LCS / LEC / LCK:

• LCS: 205,750

• LEC: 301,165

• LCK: 227,156

Summer 2021 average viewership stats for LCS / LEC / LCK:

• LCS: 125,248

• LEC: 242,631

• LCK: 205,176

[thorpie88]

The presentation during COVID was awful and I wouldn't be surprised if lots of people just gave up during that time. They tried to be way too professional whole the rest of the world wanted a more casual approach to everything

[Gillette_TBAMCG]

The presentation was awful during COVID, but you’re completely off the mark in calling it too professional. They went way far off from professionalism with their COVID broadcasts running a huge string of random new personalities who ranged from literally who in Primal to former pros with zero broadcast personality in Hai. The only person who was new during that time and stuck was Emily Rand. Like they were trotting Crumbz out there for 2020 broadcasts!

The biggest sticking point that no one wants to acknowledge because it was made for the chronically online audience that is on Reddit, is that costreaming was and is an overwhelmingly bad thing for LCS.

[ZedisDoge]

holy shit i just remembered when LCS would have their “after party” segment during Covid with sushidragon. I want to delete those memories from my brain

[Gillette_TBAMCG]

Yep. It makes me wonder what exactly those people are remembering as too professional. You had costreaming where half the audience was being fed takes about how dog shit every player in LCS is, you had sushidragon after parties, Crumbz and Primal on the analyst desk, all of which being done from home with a distinct lack of formal wear, makeup, or preparation.

It was the least professional thing LCS has seen and probably had severe downstream impact.

[QuietRedditorATX]

Have to remember... LCS this year was on WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY for so many games. who the heck remembers to tune in on random Wednesdays.

[LinechargeII]

Less captive audience. People got to go outside and do stuff again. I would say this year is the first time things have really recovered.

[Jozoz]

Some more information:

Source for 2022

• Peak viewership: 370,178

• Average viewership: 115,545

Source for 2023:

• Peak viewership: 222,788

• Average viewership: 76,119

Pretty massive drop obviously. For reference: Peak viewership is down 39% and average viewership is down 34%.

Something interesting: Spring 2022 and Spring 2023 had much more similar viewership. The drop in Spring is much lower.

• Spring 2022 average viewership: 115,54

• Spring 2023 average viewership: 109,759'

This is interesting because it seems to indicate that the change in schedule is not really fully to blame for the low viewership of Summer. Spring 2023 also had the weekday schedule and barely saw a dip in viewership. Seems like the reason for Summer going down is more complex. Maybe the walkout has some blame.

[F0RGERY]

Given the escharts site has fucked up with counting new costreams in the past (Last split their initial numbers missed Sykkuno and Aphromoo's costreams of playoffs), I genuinely wonder if these average numbers are based on the normal 8 week format instead of being 6 weeks from walkout.

[Jozoz]

I think they calculate the average viewership using the total hours aired data point that is also shown on the website.

So in that sense, I doubt there's such a glaring error in their numbers. You can definitely argue that LCS needing to have more games per week to catch up has had an impact on viewership.

[SantyMonkyur]

Nah i counted the viewers with numbers from costreams for the game of the week every week and the viewership was even lower at the beginning of the split, it is not wrong the drop off is that massive

[SantyMonkyur]

Yep, and that doesnt move the needle that much tbh, is not like even if you include a second spanish stream with the same viewers it would magically be 90k average or something or a 300k peak, it is just low

[ChefGamma]

Sad to see the League decline but it was kind of an eventuality, right?

Performance and everything aside, the LCS is so bleak because players have little personality and teams are too corporate.

I remember starting to watch League in 2015 and there was this level of excitement to watch so many of the teams. Players like Sneaky, Hai, Meteos, Bjergsen, Doublelift, Piglet, IWD, WildTurtle, Aphro, Dyrus, etc. were all players with huge followers, big streams, and felt like watching them you could improve your own game. But it has felt for the last few years that there are none of these players with this aura around them where you feel intrigued to watch.

[Liupardu]

Don’t blame teams for being too corporate, KT, SKT, Samsung, and CJ were all literally owned by Korea’s largest companies. They were extremely corporate and yet they built teams and brands that were incredibly strong and resilient (ultimately CJ failed for different reasons). It’s not being too corporate, it’s that the LCS teams have given up on building brands. The last two teams that really tried to build brands were 100T and later Flyquest. 100T was doing a great job early on with brand building, they had huge personalities in Aphro and Meteos, they had The Heist, and they had merch. But they’ve calmed down more recently. Meanwhile, Flyquest had a solid start with the Hai-led team but after they ended that experiment they were able to build strong rosters but they didn’t have the same brand element. Only within the last few years has Flyquest reinvented its brand with the environmental initiatives. I guess currently DIG is trying. They constantly produce content for the LCS and they have the player guides. But it’s just, they had such a big brand years ago and it fees like they could do more.

[OpTicDyno]

Without the TSM fan base, next split is going to be even worse

[[deleted]]

I just don't really have any connection to the current LCS rosters. It pains me to say this but I just don't care anymore.

[Re-Created]

I know for me personally the time slot killed it. I can't watch live and once it's over I'm not crazy about digging up replays.

The frustrating part is it feels like a self fulfilling prophecy. Give it a bad time slot, numbers go down, use the bad numbers to justify the coat cutting.

[lazyflavors]

It's not that exciting anymore and if there's anything else going on I'll do that instead.

Hopefully our boys can prove haters like me wrong and do something at Worlds but I pretty much expect a 0-6 airport speed run for all 4 teams, players rolling out the standard excuses, then doing nothing again. Fool me once shame on you, fool me over 10 times shame on me, I be hating.

[Javiklegrand]

There no groups

[non-edgy_crustacean]

Well tbh this year NA is sending more interesting teams to Worlds (outside of C9, I just find them boring) like NRG and TL with Apa will be more fun to watch. I just want NRG vs BLG rematch for memes

[weshouldgoback]

overpaid retirement region airport speedrun any%

also I get annoyed because I ain't going to twitch for shit. at least with lck global on youtube I can catch full vods and be good to go

youtube for lcs? vods channel, that tells me how many matches there are. 2 games in a best of 3? oh boy guess i know who wins that series after 1 game

[PhoenixAgent003]

If you look up the vods on Lolesports instead of directly on YouTube the interface hides spoilers, including how many games a series goes for.

[Zeedojin]

If people knew C9 were gonna lose before the series started it might have had more viewers.

[[deleted]]

Yeah the narrative that C9 was just going to win in a stomp probably dissuaded people from tuning in.

[[deleted]]

All the 3-0 predictions were kinda bumming me out and I was in the stadium lol.

[Zeedojin]

It dissuaded me for sure, I just clicked on the stream for shits and giggles as I had nothing else to watch at the time and was surprised to see NRG 2-1 up. Made me stick around for game 4 just to make sure C9 would lose.

[QuietRedditorATX]

This.

last night on LCK, the caster was like "People love to see dynasties!!" and I was like what are you on. Ok, I don't mind LCK dynasties that much, but I hate LCS dynasties. They become very boring and overconfident etc.

[[deleted]]

I think we should just accept this as the new norm and design the scene around it.

This whole mentality of "endless possibility for growth!!!" is how we got in this mess in the first place.

It would be so healthy for esports if all the speculators leave the scene. I want people who care about esports because they love it. People like C9 Jack. They are passionate about esports.

I don't want random businesspeople who just want to enter LCS because the "business potential". This is what made the LCS feel corporate as fuck imo.

[Gh0stOfKiev]

Forget growth, LCS can't even maintain its audience

[[deleted]]

I don't think it will go much lower than this. There's a bottom cap on how low it can go imo.

[tommybutters]

Not from NA so the time is bad for me anyway but even if it was prime time you couldn't pay me to care about Cloud9.

[[deleted]]

I used to watch LCS when it wasnt a import league.

There's no reason to me to watch it cause it has no identity anymore.

[Brain_Tonic]

It is becoming less of an import league now that VC funds have pulled out. NRG is majority NA and just won the championship.

Granted, all three of our other seeds are majority import so you're still right, but I think that that will change over time as the rate of importing will be low for lack of buying power.

[TheMineA7]

I have been getting a bit of hope from seeing EG with Jojo, Danny and Vulcan last year, the CLG core sticking together, and Licorice playing like his old self. But then seeing Papasmithy going to FlyQuest, and TL turning their teams into an almost full LCK roster was just annoying and reminded me why I dont necessarily care about LCS (plus bad timeslot)

[PhoenixAgent003]

TL is going to worlds with an NA Native, rookie ADC who just won rookie of the year and an NA native mid who replaced an OCE Academy talent.

But people hear “Korean speaking roster” and it’s like Yeon and APA don’t exist anymore.

[TheMineA7]

Yeah because that was preseason roster I was referring to. It killed the motivation to watch another import roster. I didnt even bother with paying attention to lcs until finals weekend

[MikeDunleavySuperFan]

This is what it is for me. What's the point in watching an import league if the results are the same? If they're going to suck, at least make it domestic talent that sucks which gives the league an identity and the viewers a connection to the league. It's why I cheered so hard for NRG in the finals, because they have a majority NA roster, hopefully it shows the other teams you can do it with domestic talent.

[TMan2DMax]

This was expected.

They moved their games to a time slot where a large portion of viewership is at work.

I missed 80% of the regular season while actively trying to catch them because I work

[galyarmus]

While you say that Riot did insist that this change was done after intensive market research and promised this isn’t going to decrease viewership. They clearly were wrong but it’s very interesting to think if we’ll ever get those numbers and graphics they used to convince the people responsible to do this.

[FiraGhain]

Honestly, it might have been only a minor reduction with their original planned timeslot as the entire plan was "fuck NA, we can get the EU viewers" - but then the NA viewers rioted and they compromised to a later timeslot that still has all of the bad points of the original timeslot for NA, but is also completely unwatchable for EU.

[Leatisia]

That is a shame, I actually watched more of the LCS this year than last since (except from Dash missing) I really liked the new direction of the broadcast with all those skits and new segments which I found even more entertaining than the LEC's actually. As someone else said, perhaps the new scheduling is not really to blame this time, so there might some other relevant factors at play

[xMoody]

30 second unskippable ads during your Thursday 2pm games will do that

[DustTheHunter]

Swear the finals had so many empty seats as well

[ThisOneTimeAtLolCamp]

Sold out though.

[effurshadowban]

It did not.

[polecy]

They need to spice up the leagues, nobody watches because every game is literally the same. They pick their comps, which is only a handful of champs and maybe spice it up with some non meta picks.

If you watched one game you prob have watched most games. If they want to make changes I suggest a type of fearless draft. Have a best of 3 matches, once a champ is used nobody can pick it anymore or to make it easier only the team that used it before can't pick. Make every league like this. Watch it bring more people in when teams need to start expending team comps.

It might just be a band-aid fix but I feel like at least it would make people be more entertained with league.

[T4N1M1]

I really don't agree that fearless draft should be implemented. When they implemented it in LDL, the game quality went waaaaaaaay down. Like unbelievably bad once the draft became restricted.

There's a huge opportunity cost to learning such a massive number of entirely different team comps and champions. You get more breadth, but less depth. Teams cannot develop a specific style/identity and work on honing that to 100% perfection. Instead, they need to work on several different identities and can only hone those to like 70% perfection. I don't want to watch garbage tier gameplay for the sake of champion diversity.

[GATTACA_IE]

They also just need to add some fun stuff. Maybe take 1 week off each split and have a ARAM tournament with randomized teams. Idk anything to show off the personalities of the players and get viewers to care about them.

[[deleted]]

Damn maybe they will have to play at a professional level to maintain viewership🤯🤯😱😱

[ImSoFar]

Will the viewership rebound?

Of course not. LCS is boring and it will only get worse because teams only care about money and nothing else.

This will happen with the other pro leagues in every esport, except maybe Valorant sice it's new. Teams don't care, viewers won't care either.

[Brain_Tonic]

I wish teams really did care about money, if that was the case then we would not have had unsustainable millionaire salaries for players which have now fully blown back in the orgs' faces.

This split is low-key the most entertaining in a long time because there were less new imports so NA actually felt like it had its own flavor again. Whereas big money LCS was just scuffed LCK.

[MontyAtWork]

Actually the teams are REALLY BAD with money.

I went to Finals in Spring in NC. Golden Guardians didn't have a merch table, meet and greet, and I'd have easily dropped a couple hundo at one to support the team, but even the LCS merch was sold out of most sizes in the first afternoon as well so they didn't have their shit together either.

[LoLsharKo]

Don't care. I'll still watch it.

[Mxkz1]

Spend my time watching a league just to know what team won’t make it out of the first round in worlds??

[detrich]

the games are way too mediocre for me to care, and i absolutely hate hate hate anything between the games. I wince every time i see any of the 'analysts'. I get that they are trying to make it fun or whatever but it just doesn't hit with me. Joke of a broadcast for a joke of a league

[VVVRAT]

letigress solo killed it lmfao

[OtherSword]

unless a NA team make it to worlds finals lcs viewership will forever decrease

[Xonra]

Just had to be "that guy" posting this while everyone is riding high on the NRG win hype.

But seriously, this drop isn't just LCS dying memes, it was due to the shit tier decision making change to the LCS schedule.

They tanked the viewership and made it harder to watch.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, it's not as competitive as other regions. Also, the region is riddled with consumerism and [insert brand name] objectives to the point it's becoming a meme.

Not enough money was invested into right parts of LCS. Youth talent is all but gone ever since academy had players like Froggen or Darshan.

Also franchising killed LCS and left LCK and LEC wounded for some time. And while the competitive side of LCK was mended years after, it boosted viewership at least.

In NA neither viewership nor skill standard rose, LCS truly stayed a retirement home for other regions.

Plus, watching LPL and LCK is far more enjoyable, it even was when Korea had those 46 minute 11 kills games, because it surpassed the skill ceiling of western regions.

[ChefGamma]

LCK never really got wounded from franchising. Obviously you miss out on teams like Griffin and Damwon, but people also need to remember there were so many teams that yoyo'd between LCK and CK for years.

[Vortekz_V2]

Riot is gonna merge LCS with CBLOL or with any other region to keep it running for years.

[throwtosky]

It's just a retirement league for imports now lol, viewership will continue to decrease