Video/Photo courtesy of Riot Games
44 million peak concurrent viewers. This is the record that was achieved by the League of Legends World Championship this year. Along 120 games played over roughly one month, more than 1 billion hours of content were watched.
Overall, the whole event achieved a 21.8 million average minute audience, which means that 21.8 million people watched one of the 20 broadcasts during any 60-second portion of that broadcast. In comparison, the Fortnite World Cup only reached a peak of 2.3 million concurrent viewers, and the final only achieved a 90,000 average minute audience.
In addition to this incredible audience record, it appears that this World Championship 2019 offers a meta much more diverse than any previous event. It seems to imply that Riot Games is slowly but steadily achieving the miracle of making all of the 146 (and soon 147) champions playable in a competitive environment.
According to Riot Games, "LCS became the third most popular major professional sports league among 18-34-year-olds in the United States." (Source)
Looking five, or even ten years ago, this achievement would have looked unthinkable. Do you feel the esports rising?
Like a teaser from the upcoming year, the League of Legends transfer window is full of promises and deceptions. It offers us its share of changes and we already set in our mind what's the next season is going to look like.
