LEC Winter 2024 Achieves Over 800,000 Peak Viewership
The LEC Winter 2024 split of League of Legends has seen a significant boost in viewership, making it the fourth most-watched LEC event ever. The split garnered a total of 830,000 peak viewers, just shy of LEC Spring 2021 by around a thousand viewers and surpassing the LEC Finals 2023 by more than 150,000 viewers.
What’s particularly impressive is that the Winter 2024 Split is the first to exceed 800,000 viewers since LEC Summer 2021. Throughout the event, there was an average viewership of 337,000 and approximately 30.7 million hours watched during the 91 hours of airtime. By comparison, the Winter split of 2023 had around 555,000 peak viewers and an average viewership of 271,000. The 2024 tournament also saw record-breaking numbers during its opening week.
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Spanish streamer Ibai broadcast on Twitch
The significant increase in viewership can be attributed in large part to co-streaming, particularly on the Twitch channels of popular Spanish streamer Ibai, who is also a co-owner of the esports organization KOI, and former LEC caster Caedrel. Additionally, the strong viewership numbers were boosted by the presence of MAD Lions KOI, a team with a loyal following, making it to the tournament finals.
As a result, Spanish-language platforms collectively achieved a higher peak viewership compared to English-speaking broadcasts, with figures of 348,027 and 318,345, respectively.
Interestingly, there was a technical issue with the main broadcast during the final match of the series, but co-streams remained unaffected. This incident led to some community backlash towards Riot Games, the publisher of the game, especially considering the recent layoffs of over 500 staff members, including several members of the LEC production team.
LEC Winter Split
The LEC Winter Split was introduced in 2023 as the third official split in the LEC season, offering fans the chance to experience four finals featuring EMEA teams annually (Winter, Spring, Summer, and the LEC Finals). G2 Esports emerged victorious in the Winter 2024 split, with the final match becoming the highlight of the tournament in terms of viewership. MAD Lions KOI attracted the most attention as the most-watched team, captivating approximately 11.6 million viewers with their games.
In terms of average viewership throughout LEC Winter 2024, the French esports organization Karmine Corp stood out as the fan-favorite team, drawing an average of 437,170 viewers for their match-ups.
