After weeks and weeks of sitting on the edge of your seats and biting your nails to see which League of Legends teams are worthy of the LEC title, we finally have a winner—G2 Esports. But, LEC hasn’t been as successful this year since viewership has dropped by 50 percent from 2022 to 2023.
According to Esports Charts data from July 31, LEC’s peak viewership has dropped by 53 percent, when compared to LEC Summer split 2022. Last year, LEC recorded 732,573 viewers during finals while this year, the finals between G2 and Excel Esports held on July 30 only had 325,193 fans watching.
Related: G2 share their incredible LoL scrim stats, and it’s no wonder they won another LEC title
The average LEC viewership has also gone down from 211,743 to 172,558, which is an 18.5 percent decline.
This year, the EMEA Championship made drastic changes to its format, switching from games being played only two days a week to three days a week, regular split games being played in best of three formats, and topping all that off with changes to Championship points, the main metric used to keep track of which teams qualify for Worlds.
As a result, pro players are playing less consequential games and the community has little to no interest in watching matches that won’t have any impact on the final standings.
“Expected. The final was pretty much meaningless. No Worlds spot, nothing to gain for the summer final, played in the studio with a little crowd, no big opening ceremonies, no hype. Riot Europe has a lot to do to bring some meaning to the split winners in LEC because I don’t think many care who wins those splits and they seem way less impactful than the ones in the old format. And it was a quick stomp too + XL doesn’t bring many viewers, which didn’t help,” explained one fan in League’s subreddit post from July 30.
Related: All teams qualified for 2023 LoL World Championship
If LEC continues down this path, I’d say we can expect the viewership to drop even more because why would you watch games which will simply don’t influence the teams’ standing and their chances at qualifying Worlds?
To be perfectly honest, I no longer enjoy LEC, although I was a huge fan in the past and didn’t miss a single game. I find the format to be excruciatingly boring and I agree with everything the community has said, but, more importantly, I no longer see Europe as a competitive region. Each year, LEC champions are eliminated by Asian teams which simply have a better grasp on the meta, unique picks, and game-breaking strategies that always leave the Western players shocked and awed.
Hopefully, I’m wrong and Worlds 2023 will knock my socks off and leave me shocked and awed.
