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Over the weekend, fans watched as DRX overcame the odds to win the League of Legends Worlds 2022 Championship and set viewership records.
The South Korean team defeated T1 Esports three games against two to become the first team to win the title via play-ins. The gameplay was nail-biting. The rivalry between DRX’s Deft and T1’s Faker dates back to secondary school and 10 years of professional play. It’s no wonder fans tuned in and broke viewership records.
According to Esports Cards, peak viewers reached almost 5.15 million for the final. This is a new record for League of Legends esports, surpassing Worlds 2021 4 million peak viewers. This is the second highest number of viewers registered for an esports event, behind only the Free Fire World Series 2021 at 5.4 million.
Co-streaming undoubtedly accounted for some of the viewership. Ibais Spanish stream peaked at 482K, outperforming Riot’s official Spanish broadcasts of LVPs and LLA.
The opening ceremony effectively allowed fans to tune in to the broadcast before the games started. Jackson Wang and Lil Nas X’s performance peaked at 3.2 million concurrent viewers.
However, the maximum number of viewers – the maximum number of simultaneous viewers – is only one way to measure the performance of a broadcast. Worlds 2022 averaged 987,000 viewers during the tournament’s nearly 144 hours of airtime. While the average viewership is similar to some recent regular seasons in the US sports competitionsthe length and global reach of League of Legends are not.
The total audience is not a perfect comparison because of how long Worlds is compared to traditional sports championships. However, it does help us to compare the reach of these events. The viewer maximum is a snapshot, so the total audience of Worlds 2022 will exceed the 5.15 million maximum. We’ll have to wait for confirmation from Riot, but these early indications suggest League of Legends Worlds 2022 is on track to break more records.
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