Worlds 2023 viewership numbers

Worlds 2023 marked the return of Faker to glory, after seven years of failures.

Given that T1 won the tournament despite facing very difficult opponents, it’s worth asking the question: how did LoL players react to this historic event? And how many of them watched the competition?

🏆 @T1LOL ARE THE 2023 WORLD CHAMPIONS! 🏆 pic.twitter.com/Ixovr818cs

— LoL Esports (@lolesports) November 19, 2023

Worlds 2023 stats

According to Escharts, Worlds 2023 had 116.5 hours of airtime and was watched for a total of 147 million hours. The average number of viewers was 1.26 million. At its peak, the event had 6.4 million viewers, which is quite impressive compared to the viewership registered for previous editions of Worlds.

To put things in perspective, Worlds 2022 had 5.15 million viewers at its peak and less than 1 million viewers on average. Despite having nearly 144 hours of airtime, it was watched for a total of just 142 million hours.

If we go back to 2021, that edition of Worlds had an excellent number of average viewers (1.3 million) but only 4 million viewers at its peak. Many fans simply did not care about the Grand Final result. This clearly demonstrates that it’s not as much about the prize pool or the importance of the tournament as it is about the people involved in it.

Fans follow individuals and teams. They want to know how their stories unfold. If you don’t have great protagonists, you don’t have great viewership numbers. It’s that simple. Other factors, such as the prize pool, matter much less than people like to think.

League of Legends is played by around 120 million people. If the Grand Final of Worlds 2023 was watched by 6 million of them at its peak, this means that 5% of the LoL community follows the game’s esports scene. This number is extremely low compared to what it could be, but it’s still decent. More importantly, it has grown significantly over the past several years.

League of Legends could be a lot more spectacular than it is. All it needs is a bit more unpredictability and a slightly smaller kill impact. Right now, it feels as though there are too many moments when the game could end because of a single mistake. One death and that’s it, there’s no turning back.

You can’t make the buildings immune to damage for at least 5 seconds, you cannot buy back like you can in Dota 2, and there’s very little HP on those Nexus structures. After the 25-minute mark, one mistake will cost you the game.

Header: Riot Games