The Korean T1 team, in fact, has once again confirmed the status of the main media force on the planet. By the end of 2025, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok’s boys officially became the most popular esports organization in the world — they topped the global ranking in terms of total broadcast time at all key venues.
Let’s look at who else has been treading on their heels and why the Korean scene still dictates fashion in the industry.
Table of Contents
Esports Charts Methodology and Global Esports Leaders
A recent report from Esports Charts analysts, frankly speaking, gives the most voluminous picture. The hours of watching official events on PCs, consoles and smartphones were taken into account, while ignoring Chinese platforms and the genre of “royal battles”.
Apparently, three whales are registered in the top: League of Legends, the ever-living CS2 and Mobile Legends Mobile: Bang Bang (MLBB). Interestingly, by the way, new faces from the Counter-Strike camp have finally broken into the top ten this year, although T1’s leadership seems somewhat unshakable.
T1 viewing statistics and the dominance of LCK teams
Four years in a row — that’s how long T1 holds the crown of the most viewed tag. In 2025, the Seoul-based organization scored an impressive 196 million hours of views, which is 65% more than its closest pursuer.
However, the season inside the country was, to be honest, so-so. In the LCK regional league, they were hanging around fourth place, but on the T1 international stage, they turned on the gods mode again — they took the third world champions title in a row, breaking through from the very bottom.
The rating of the Gen teams.G and Hanwha Life by viewing hours
Gen.G gained a foothold right behind the leaders, who apparently had the most stable year in their history. They won the LCK split, took the Mid-Season Invitational and the Esports World Cup, but in the end they still stumbled over T1 in the Worlds semifinals.
It all comes down to this layout in the top:
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Gen.G is a confident second place.
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Hanwha Life Esports is the sixth place, thanks for winning the LCK Cup and the international First Stand trophy.
KT Rolster — closed the Korean representative office in seventh place.
By the way, their entry into the World Cup finals boosted the overall viewing statistics. In fact, the Korean League of Legends is the only product today that makes millions of people sit in front of screens for hours, despite any lineup changes.
Will anyone be able to move this monolith in 2026?
Counter-Strike 2 breaks the charts: how has the top esports changed in 2025
Let’s be honest: we haven’t seen such a dominance of shooters since the golden era of NAVI.
Team Vitality records and the popularity of the Counter-Strike 2 shooter
The bees from Vitality, along the way, had the fiercest season in history — two majors in a row and nine top-class cups in the piggy bank. Their statistics on viewing hours, I must say, have become the best indicator for the CS scene since the peak of Natus Vincere in 2021.
Interestingly, Team Spirit, MOUZ and even Team Falcons squeezed into the tail of the ranking, in places from eighth to tenth. Although each roster had its own path, their massive presence at the top is, in fact, a bold hint at the increased depth of the roster in the elite of the global Counter—Strike in 2025.
Mobile gaming: Asia leaves no chance
By the way, the ratings have once again poked our noses into the insane growth of mobile phones in the Asia-Pacific region. The Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) game also dragged us in: two teams from Indonesia broke into the top four at once.
Indonesia is, in fact, the main stronghold of MLBB esports.
They consistently make figures of 1,000,000+ simultaneous viewers on broadcasts, both at home leagues and at world events. It seems that mobile esports has finally ceased to be the “younger brother” of big platforms — now it is the rightful owner of the ether.
Hidden Leaders: The teams with the fastest audience growth
The era of wild comebacks from obscurity has arrived in the sports industry: bands that were gathering dust in regional basements yesterday are now dictating trends to millions. Over the past couple of years, a whole bunch of clubs have managed to make a jet jump from the “second echelon” to the elite, and they used social media as the main battering ram.
We see how yesterday’s newfoundlies are taking over the media space, pushing aside the old giants.
Factors of explosive growth of the fan base
Current organizations are building their influence around the world through digital arteries — this is how local fans, by the way, turn into a global community. The main engine here is the most “trashy” and personal content: all kinds of backstages, streams from training sessions and interactive with players. By the way, clubs from the second division are now pouring huge budgets into short videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
One video and hundreds of thousands of new followers in a week are already in your pocket.
A deep analysis of the audience’s habits, in principle, allows you to find the secret desires of the fans and adjust the entire communication strategy to them. Organizations carefully check which posts are actually being “inserted” by people, and which formats are being visited by young people, and based on these figures, they reassemble the content plan on the fly. This method, in fact, turns a boring club page into a live media with its unique grin and manner of speech.
The strategy of transition of organizations from the tir-2 to the tir-1 segment
To get out of the shooting range-2 swamp into the top segment, it’s not enough just to win in the arena — you need, frankly, armor-piercing support in the information field. Breakthrough teams rely on emotions: they make documentaries about life inside the club, launch crazy challenges and let fans steer some decisions through voting.
Plans to motivate “becoming the first in the village” turn into hard KPIs.
Doubling the base in one season, breaking through a million in TikTok, or entering the global market through English is probably now the base for any ambitious CEO.
Unusual ways of connecting with fans, by the way, have become the main trump card in the fight for attention. Clubs are actively implementing smart bots for mailing lists, riveting their own exclusive apps and screwing game mechanics directly into the news feed. It seems that the stable composition of the media team and wild investments in the training of SMM specialists are the secret ingredient that ensures top-quality content and instant response to any hype topics.
The role of social media in the formation of a new audience
In the 21st century, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram have become the main “vacuum cleaners” for attracting new fans, especially zoomers. Micro-influencers, who, by the way, have around 10-100 thousand followers, now play a crucial role in how the content of the teams spreads across the network.
Working with such bloggers opens the door to very narrow, but at least as loyal gatherings as possible — to be honest, you can’t get there with ordinary advertising at all.
If you dig deeper, then analyzing what competitors and market leaders are doing, in principle, helps to find free places under the sun. Organizations actively check which publications and groups rival fans are going to, which tags they use, and what they repost on their walls. It seems that all this data then turns into targeted advertising strikes with creativity — they strike directly at the interests of the target audience.
The algorithms of the platforms, by the way, love regularity and high activity under posts, so the clubs build communication with the people on a daily basis. Polls, stories, endless contests and live broadcasts are, apparently, already the standard of survival in the media space.
The fastest growing Esports Organizations of the Year
The list of those who showed wild growth in subscribers suddenly included clubs that relied on “authenticity” and live communication with fans. Instead of spending their budgets on expensive PR, they invested in their media people. A deep understanding of what the fans really need has allowed these teams to do cool things even with very modest investments.
The breakthroughs, by the way, make full use of the content from the users themselves: they repost fan photos, nag joint projects and turn fans into co-authors of the club’s history. This approach, in fact, creates a powerful core of loyal people who themselves, quite voluntarily, distribute the team’s posts on their grids.
As a result, the support of talents within the fan base – from those who rivet memes to serious analysts — makes the audience an independent and very valuable media asset.
Fair enough, isn’t it?
