LoL Worlds Viewership Analyzed
Everything comes down to the numbers
November 19, 2022
Cursed
Despite the fact that Overwatch and League of Legends are two very different games, the viewership of both of them at the recently hosted worlds was, to put it mildly, jaw-dropping. Overwatch has also had some significant statistics following the release of Overwatch 2, which brought it alive after a decreasing environment in eSports.
However, League of Legends has been the most constant game in terms of having a robust eSports ecosystem with millions of followers. Let's have a look at the total views, concurrent views, and maximum views that each game received in the year 2022.
Total, Highest and Unique Viewers of Each Game
League of Legends Worlds Championship 2022
Let’s first talk about the giant in eSports, the LoL. A high audience of 5.1 million was recorded during the 2022 League of Legends World Championship, which caused it to break the previous record for the viewership of a League of Legends esports event.
This is a 1.1 million person increase from its 2021 edition, as stated by the esports analytics organization known as Esports Charts.
As a consequence of this, the competition is now the most-watched League of Legends tournament in the annals of esports history and the second most-watched esports event overall.
From the beginning of the month through the conclusion, North America hosted the League of Legends World Championship. Two teams from South Korea, T1 and DRX, played to a decisive fifth game, with DRX emerging victors. DRX Kingen was awarded the MVP award who spoke about his struggles and mindset playing against T1.
There were significant improvements made to the broadcasting and promotion of the event, which led to a massive increase in attendance compared to previous World Championships.
For all games combined, the event also set a new record for English, Korean, and Vietnamese broadcasts, and for League of Legends, the Spanish language broadcasts set a new record.
OWL Grand Finals
There had been a downward tendency in viewership for a few events before to the 2022 Overwatch League Playoffs, but that trend has already been reversed.
If we exclude Chinese viewers, Esports Charts reports that the finals attracted an audience of 397k at its peak and an average of around 216k.
The 2022 Playoffs will have the second-highest viewership of any event in the game's history, behind only the 2018 regular season tournament.
2022 Playoffs peak viewership more than doubled that of 2021 Playoffs 134k viewers. Playoffs 2022 recorded 9.9m hours compared to 2.57m.
The event had 50k fewer peak views than the most-watched Overwatch event, Inaugural Season: Stage 1 in early 2018. The 2022 playoffs had 50k more viewers than the 2018 finals, the franchise's third-most-watched event.
The Overwatch League 2022 season has come to a close, with Dallas Fuel defeating San Francisco Shock 4-3 in the final match. The MVP was awarded to the professional OW player Kim ‘Proper’ Dong-hyun. The San Francisco Shock presently have ‘Proper’ on their roster, and he performs the DPS role for them.
![]()
