As one the biggest games in the world, League of Legends is constantly under the microscope when it comes to player counts, popularity, how strong its global esports scene is, and how “dead” it really is, with League lovers and haters alike always very invested in the answers.
There can never be a totally clear answer on how “dead” any game is, with those who love rival titles eager to proclaim its demise and gamers who play daily defending it to the hilt—but with League, things look pretty set in stone.
Is League dying?
No, League of Legends is absolutely not dying. League continues to go from strength to strength every season and 2023 is no different; the playerbase continues to get bigger and bigger year-on-year and though some fans do walk away, many hundreds of thousands are always joining to take their place.
There are always going to be veteran players saying that we should put the mouse and keyboard away and trade the grassy battlefields on Summoner’s Rift for real grass outside but they are in the minority.
Similarly, many long-term fans take breaks—I recently came back from a League hiatus to grind for Emerald—but many eventually come back.
So, no, League is very much alive and thriving in 2024 right now.
League player counts: How many still play?
Today, more than 200 million players log into League and play casual and ranked matches every month. This is according to data released by Riot at the start of last year. There’s been a 10 percent lift since 2022, where around 180 million were logging in across any given 30-day stretch.
It’s been suggested by ActivePlayer.io, which estimates player counts based on API metrics, that 130,527,889 logged into League and played at least one game in July 2024. The same site estimates around 1,015,100 play every hour.
In years past, Riot has said there were between 75 million (2018) and 100 million (2017) logging in and playing each month. When the game first went live in 2011 it quickly climbed to around 11.5 million monthly players before more than doubling to 32 million in 2012. This slumped a little, to 27 million, a year later before hitting nine digits in 2017 for the very first time.
Region-by-region breakdown
Riot doesn’t often share League player stats anymore, but its most recent numbers had regional player shares looking something like this:
- China — 75,000,000
- Europe West — 34,830,000
- North America — 27,889,000
- Korea — 19,822,000
- Europe Nordic & East — 18,428,000
- Brazil — 11,488,00
- Turkey — 7,727,000
- Latin America North — 6,798,000
- Latin America South — 6,052,000
- Russia — 4,888,000
- Oceania — 2,746,000
- Japan — 1,736,000
When the League devs share newer stats, we’ll update this article.
Esports event viewership
League esports is easily one of the most popular competitive gaming circuits on the planet, especially when it comes to the season-splitting Mid-Season Invitational and year-end World Championship.
In 2022, Worlds hit yet another high point when it came to viewership; more than five million tuned in at its height. This number only grew in 2023; over 6.4 million caught Faker and T1 surviving WBG to win their fourth Worlds in the history of SKT and T1.
Even more impressive, MSI 2024 broke the concurrent record for League viewership thanks to a format change-up and the presence of some of League‘s most popular players. We can quite confidently say League esports is still powering along, especially in Korea, China, and whenever the leagues come together for events.
Things aren’t going well everywhere though. In NA, the premier LCS competition has plummeted in viewership over the last three years, dropping from around 200,000 average viewers across the 2020 season to just over 109,000 across the 2023 Spring Split which wrapped in April. 2024’s numbers rose slightly but it is believed to be due to a change in scheduling more than a rising interest in the region.
This trend holds across the West, with Europe suffering a 53 percent viewership dip through 2023. While this number is significantly higher than seen in NA, it’s a worrying four-year streak of LEC viewership numbers falling even despite the introduction of co-streaming.
“Gacha” controversy threatened player counts
Last year, the League fandom was up in arms about a new feature Riot brought to the cosmetics side of the game: Cosmic Capsules.
In essence (yes, I meant that), these new capsules that arrived in the 2023 Cosmic event look quite a lot like a “gacha” system. They’re the only way for us to get Dark Cosmic Erasure Jhin—a particularly biting sting for me as I used to collect every skin he gets—and that particular venture could cost as much as $200 USD.
The outcry did little to change daily player counts though, and the overall “gacha” backlash did very little to actually affect the huge League player counts, even after many are already threatened to quit (or just boycott buying skins).
Published: Jul 13, 2024 01:00 am