League of Legends‘ LCK has broken the league’s all-time viewership record following Gen.G’s LCK Spring 2024 split victory.
The tournament saw a massive viewership increase compared to the tournament’s previous editions, recording 2.6m peak viewers and 98m hours watched, according to esports data platform Esports Charts.
The LCK is traditionally one of the most popular League of Legends leagues in the world, with seven of its splits in the top 20 most-viewed League of Legends events in history. Still, the numbers recorded for the Spring Split 2024 were surprising even in that context.
Compared to the second most popular LCK event, LCK Summer 2023, this year’s tournament saw more than a million more peak viewers (1.59m for LCK Summer 2023) and around 30m more hours watched (62.2m). The numbers are even more impressive when compared to Riot Games’ other franchised League of Legends competition. This year’s LEC and LCS Spring splits recorded 593,000 and 246,000 peak viewers, respectively. Esports Charts does not record Chinese viewership figures for the LPL, China’s major League of Legends series.
LCK Spring 2024 also recorded around 355,000 average viewers across its 276-hour air time.
The numbers make the LCK Spring the most-watched League of Legends event of 2024, but interestingly also the sixth-most watched event in the game’s long history.
In terms of peak viewers, LCK Spring 2024 recorded more viewers than Riot’s Mid-Season Invitationals in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023, as well as the 2017 and 2018 World Championships. The LCK Spring had just around 200,000 peak viewers less than the 2020 World Championship, an impressive feat for a regional tournament.
The good viewership is due in no small part to two well-liked Korean organisations, T1 and Gen.G, reaching the finals. The last series even went all the way to the final match, with Gen.G beating T1 3:2, securing a direct spot at the MSI. The event was also co-streamed by a large number of regional and global creators, further adding to the viewer pool.
