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Worlds 2022 suffers major viewership drop from previous year

Inconvenient time zones could be to blame.

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The League of Legends World Championship has seen a significant drop in viewership when compared to the previous year.

The group stage of Worlds 2022 has seen a drop of around 40 percent in peak viewers, average viewers, and hours watched when compared to the group stage of Worlds 2021, according to a report by Esports Charts.

The Group A match between Fnatic and T1 in the first week of the group stage peaked at 1,390,933 viewers. But only 1,219,103 viewers tuned in to watch the rematch in the following week. T1 also hold the record for the second most-viewed match of the tournament, recording 1,362,885 viewers in their match against EDward Gaming in the first round robin. The Gen.G versus Royal Never Give Up match in Group D followers with 1,265,910 peak viewers.

T1 happens to be the most popular team by average viewers as well, boasting 1,049,804 viewers during the event. Fnatic and EDward Gaming take second and third place, with 997,977 and 987,645 viewers, respectively.

During the group stage of Worlds 2021, there were 2,232,979 peak viewers, 1,308,529 average viewers, and 79,165,976 hours watched, according to a report by Esports Charts. But last year’s competition took place in Iceland and had much more favorable hours for viewers in Europe and Asia.

The report also indicates that the average viewing number of Worlds 2022 dropped in multiple broadcast languages. In English, it’s only down five percent, but in Korean and Portuguese, the numbers are down 63 and 42 percent respectively. This, again, is almost certainly thanks to inconvenient time zones. During the first week of the group stage, the games started at 6am in South Korea and 10/11pm in most of Europe.


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Author
Mateusz Miter
Polish Staff Writer. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.