Worlds 2023 become the most-watched esports tournament of in history

The Worlds Finals 2023 became the most viewed esports competition ever with an astounding 6.4 million peak concurrent views, shattering all prior records, according to Esports Charts.

With the staggering viewership that Worlds 2023 has received, it creates a new benchmark that will make previous esports competitions appear insignificant in comparison. The competition showcased League of Legends’ prowess as an esports event as well as its status as the most popular and longest-running video game in the genre. Nearly 6 million people watched the Worlds 2023 finals simultaneously, shattering the record for the most viewers of an esports event and creating a momentous occasion for one of the most illustrious series in history.

History will be made in London.

The 2024 World Final lands at the iconic O2 Arena. pic.twitter.com/yeaeTLyHpz

— LoL Esports (@lolesports) November 19, 2023

 

According to Esports Charts, the opening game of the League of Legends World Final shattered the previous record for the highest peak viewing at Worlds with over 5.9 million concurrent viewers. With 6,402,760 peak viewers during Game 3, the championship game reached the 6 million viewer mark. Given that Chinese viewers are not included in the statistics, the total number of viewers worldwide for the League of Legends tournament is substantially more than 6 million.

LoL Worlds 2023 breaks all viewership records except

With over 4 million viewers, T1’s Semifinal match between T1 and JDG was the second most watched series, surpassing the previous Semifinal by at least 2 million views and the Worlds 2022 Grand Final by 400,000 more viewers. Riot Games itself has revealed that the addition of more high-stakes matches due to the Swiss stage helped increase the average viewership in the early going.

The series between T1 and LNG, which peaked at a little over 3,000,000, viewers came in third place. For League of Legends esports, this is a major turning point because it broke the industry record set by the Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore, which drew in over 5.4 million viewers in a single session.

The competition also succeeded in setting new records for the number of viewers in the main broadcast languages, including English (1.64 million Peak Viewers), Vietnamese (760.7K Peak Viewers), and Korean (1.87 million Peak Viewers), according to Esports Charts. Even with the highest peak viewership, Worlds 2023 was unable to surpass the previous record for “Watch time.”

The record is still in place for Worlds 2021, with 174,826,794 total hours viewed, as opposed to Worlds 2023’s 145,577,623 hours. Despite the dire news surrounding League of Legends’ future, the game’s viewership keeps setting new milestones.

Header: Riot Games