The League of Legends 2025 Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) has shattered its previous viewership record for the event, peaking at over 3.4m viewers.
According to data platform Esports Charts, the grand final series between T1 and Gen.G hit 3,445,577 concurrent viewers (excluding viewership from Mainland Chinese platforms). This surpasses the previous year’s 2.8 million figure, highlighting strong year-on-year growth.
MSI is historically the second most-followed League of Legends tournament of the season, only behind the season-ending World Championship. Taking place in Canada, Vancouver, Gen.G defeated Korean rivals T1 in the final to win back-to-back MSI championships.
While peak viewership has gone up significantly, average viewership (949,582) has decreased from the previous year by over 60,000 people. This is likely caused by timezone differences, which negatively impacted European viewers.
The Power of T1 and the LCK
In fact, it was Korean-speaking viewership that had the highest peak at the tournament, reaching over 1.1m viewers, as opposed to the 736,967 of English speakers.
Vietnamese fans continue to contribute a large share of the viewership (697,114), nearly equalling English viewers. Spanish and Chinese language speaking platforms peaked at 260,736 and 236,681.
T1’s presence and deep run at MSI 2025 were a major contributing factor in driving viewership. The Korean team was featured in all five most-watched series and recorded a combined 35m hours watched, similar to the numbers from the previous edition (34.4m). The top three were by Gen.G (26m) and Anyone’s Legend (17.8m).
Among Western teams, G2 Esports was the most-followed team, with a total of 13.6m hours watched, likely driven by additional stage time in the play-in stage. It also further proves the team’s popularity despite the disappointing results.
What Else Could Have Impacted Viewership?
Other potential factors behind the growth at this year’s MSI are the double-elimination format featuring Fearless Draft. The introduction of the new draft approach has led to several nail-biting best-of-five series, which usually drive up overall viewership and engagement.
English esports personality Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont continues to be the leading co-streamer when it comes to LoL Esports, having peaked at over 256,000 concurrent viewers and an impressive 127,779 average.
YouTube has overtaken Twitch as the leading streaming platform for League of Legends events, with nearly 2m peak viewers as opposed to the 800,000 from Twitch.
The 10 teams from MSI will now compete at the Esports World Cup later this week, alongside LTA’s Cloud9 and LCK’s Hanwha Life Esports, competing for a share of the $2,000,000 (~£1.48m) prize pool.
