The first day of the new LCS season is over, and the viewership figures are... abysmal. How could this happen?
Hey, are you a fan of League of Legends? Did you watch the first day of the new LCS season, which started this week? If your answer is "No", then you're certainly not the only one. The viewership numbers for the opening day were abysmal. Only seventy-seven thousands fans tuned into the official broadcast on Twitch, that is nearly a hundred thousand less, than last split. How could this happen?
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100K fewer viewers than last split, only 77K watching the opening match, these are abysmal numbers for the new LCS Split. Just to compare this to the splits in the years before: In 2019 nearly 219K people watched the opening of the summer split, in 2014 this umber dwindled down to 147K. For the opening of the Summer 2021 the number was back at 222K, and even in 2022 there were 118K watching. (These numbers were provided by Esports Charts on Twitter) And now, Riot Games has to ask themselves the question : How could this happen?
Some Possible Answers
In a popular Reddit Thread about this topic, users made some suggestions why the LCS was watched that poorly.
One thing might be the whole drama about the NACL, the LCSPA and the LCS walkout. Other users pointed out the unsuitable starting times of the LCS, which started on a normal midweek day, and the late announcements of the schedule.
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Another reason, which got a huge amount of upvotes, was made by the user "ThisOneTimeAtLolCamp". He stated, that he, as a European, didn't even know that the League was starting. So he was surprised when he saw all the post match threads in the morning.
Most likely, a mixture of all these causes were the reason behind the poor viewership numbers. Let's see if the numbers will increase again or if NA is dead.