Red Bull League of Its Own, a showmatch event organised by energy drink brand Red Bull, has recorded strong viewership figures for its first-ever edition which concluded last weekend in Berlin, Germany.
The event saw a high of 494,324 peak viewers, according to esports data platform Esports Charts. This makes it the tenth most-watched League of Legends event in history.
The Red Bull event, which notably sold out its venue in less than three hours, was described as a ‘showcase’ and had a unique competition format. League of Legends World Champions and highly-popular South Korean organisation T1 visited Germany and played matches against high-profile European organisations, including G2 Esports and Karmine Corp.
The tournament took place in Berlin in the Velodrom arena in front of around 7,000 in-person fans. During the event, Red Bull also announced the event would return for 2024, with next year’s edition set to take place in Paris, France.
The event recorded impressive viewership figures, with the peak of around 500,000 accompanied by an average viewership of 304,000 across its eight and a half hours of air time.
The most-watched match of the event was, interestingly, not the grand final between T1 and G2, but the match between T1 and Karmine Corp, a product of both teams’ large and highly dedicated fanbases.
The tournament saw T1 win against BIG, NNO OLD, and Karmine Corp, but lose in the grand final to G2 Esports in what has been described as an upset. However, all matches except for the final saw T1 play each match with different champions from a limited total pool to even the odds.
The Red Bull event managed to draw viewership similar to many top-tier esports championship events, perhaps thanks to its unique structure and the presence of highly popular organisations.
Another recent showmatch event, KCX3: Karmine Corp vs The World, held in September in Paris by French organisation Karmine Corp, also saw great success. It drew roughly 150,000 peak concurrent viewers online and many in-person fans across LAN showmatches in four different esports titles.
Sergen “BrokenBlade” Çelik, top laner for G2 Esports, said:” We both took the game a little less seriously, but we managed to win anyway, and I’m very happy about that. I’m very jealous of T1 for being able to play so many games in front of this amazing crowd.”
