T1 vs. JDG at MSI 2023 breaks audience records

There is no doubt that when we saw that the final of the MSI 2023 Upper Bracket was between T1 and JD Gaming, two favorite teams of this tournament, we knew it would be a true clash of titans. In addition to the five exciting games we enjoyed, the match became the most watched in the history of MSI.

Although the figures of the Worlds have not yet been reached, the MSI audience has grown increasingly. Moreover, considering historical data, we can mention that the only MSI that had less than 1M viewers (talking about viewing peaks) was the one played in 2018. From that moment, the figures did not stop growing, and in 2022, the grand final between RNG and T1 exceeded 2M viewers.

Upper Bracket Final between T1 and JDG breaks viewership records

While it is true that fans are becoming much more interested in the MSI every year, there is no doubt that the changes in the format for this 2023 season have helped the tournament’s popularity to increase even more.

The match between T1 and JDG, two of the favorite teams to lift the championship trophy in this tournament, became the most exciting series of the year so far. In addition, the morbid curiosity generated by these two teams in the community broke all the audience records in the history of the MSI. According to the website that analyzes and displays data regarding online viewership, Esports Charts, the series peaked at 2,297,019 viewers.

However, this is not the only record that has been broken in this match. So far, as we are already in the final stretch of the tournament, MSI 2023 has an average of 725,000 spectators per match, making it the highest figure in the entire history of the MSI. Before this, the record was held by the 2021 edition, which had an average of 711,000 viewers.

Co-streaming helps Riot Games

Undoubtedly, implementing co-streaming at MSI 2023 has been a determining factor in increasing the tournament’s popularity. Unfortunately, while this is a practice that Riot Games has used since Worlds 2022, they did not allow many content creators to co-stream the matches.

However, for MSI 2023, more than 40 creators can stream matches in their native languages and from many world regions.

While not all of these streamers are extremely popular, others are quite the opposite. For example, the official stream by Ibai Llanos, content creator and owner of KOI, averages over 60,000 viewers at the tournament and has enjoyed peaks of over 300,000.

When writing this article, we are just minutes from the MSI 2023 Lower Bracket semifinal between Bilibili Gaming and Gen.G Esports. The winner of this series will play against T1 to find the second finalist of the tournament. Now, it only remains to wait if the audience continues to increase, and it will likely do so, and on Sunday in the grand final, the record of viewers will be broken again.

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