The League of Legends World Championship has suffered a significant drop in audience, with viewership dropping by nearly 40% from last year’s group stage.
With the playoff stage of Worlds 2022 just around the corner, statistics website Esports Charts has released the viewership figures for the group stage, which indicate a sharp decline when compared to last year’s event in Iceland.
The group stage hit a peak viewership of 1.39 million concurrent viewers during the day two match between T1 and Fnatic. This figure is 38 percent below last year’s tally of 2.23 million, recorded during the group match between T1 and DetonatioN FocusMe — which ended up being the fourth-most viewed match of the entire tournament.
Esports Charts revealed that other metrics have registered a similar drop, with the event posting an average viewership of 826,034 viewers (down 37 percent) and 46.5 million hours watched (down 41 percent) during the group stage.
According to the website, the primary reason for this sharp decline is the “inconvenient time zone for Asian viewers”. This paints a worrying picture for the rest of the event as seven of the eight teams still in contention are from Asia. (The only exception is Rogue, the LEC Summer 2022 champion.)
The large drop in viewership comes after a successful 2021 Worlds event that set a new viewership record for League of Legends esports during the grand final between EDG and DWG KIA.
The thrilling best-of-five series had a peak viewership of just over 4 million viewers, shattering the previous record of 3.9 million viewers, set during the 2019 World Championship semifinal between T1 and G2.
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