Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is a name synonymous with success in League of Legends and esports. The Korean is considered one of, if not the best player in the world at the Riot title and has three world championships under his belt already.
It was announced just recently that he would be switching from streaming platform Azubu to Twitch – so understandably, the League of Legends community was incredibly excited. What followed was record-breaking numbers for an individual streamer.
Whilst we saw ELEAGUE bring in over 1,000,000 concurrent viewers for the English speaking CS:GO Major stream recently, an individual reaching a staggering 237,000 is simply unprecedented.
The stream did indeed showcase the Korean player’s insane talent for the game but arguably was a novelty for many Western stream viewers. For those wishing to understand what Faker was saying, they had to wait on a translation to appear as the chat was set to Korean language only. It may be the case that the bulk of his Korean viewership will also follow their favourite streamer over from Azubu to Twitch in which case we can be assured of some of the biggest numbers around for any individual streamer.
Whether or not the Western League of Legends aficionados trade their interaction with Michael “imaqtiepie” Santana for sheer quality of play in terms of long-term viewership is yet to be seen. Should the Korean’s continue to flock to watch Faker, he may well become one of the biggest streamers on the already incredibly popular streaming platform.
Esports Insider says: It’s great to see the legend that is Faker appear on Twitch. Azubu has never been the platform of choice for many – so it’ll be interesting to see if his numbers keep up with the initial hype. If they do, he’ll undoubtedly be one of the biggest Twitch streamers.