It only took one day of Worlds 2024 Swiss stage to break a new viewership record for this phase of the tournament. Let’s see what happened.
Image Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
A peak of nearly 3 million viewers on Worlds Swiss Stage Day 1
With Worlds already registering over 1 million peak viewership during play-ins, numbers were bound to go even higher with Swiss matches kicking off on October 3. The top 16 teams in the world will be fighting for a chance to advance to the knockout stage and when it comes to viewership, T1 and the Korean audience keeps leading the charge.
A peak of 2.82M concurrent viewers was reached during the series between Top Esports and current world champion T1, according to data platform Esports Charts. Out of those millions of viewers, more than a quarter were Korean fans, who started tuning into the tournament now that the LCK teams are playing.
This is supported by the fact that Gen.G’s match against Weibo Gaming was the second most-watched game of the day, with 2.31M peak viewers.
Overall, Day 1 of Swiss already registered over 14.2M Hours Watched, marking a 52.7% increase compared to the previous year. If we were to compare with 2023, T1’s series against Top Esports would slot into fourth place among the most-watched series.
T1 carries viewership across the board
T1’s popularity is not only related to Korean fans. According to Esports Charts, the Korean viewership on the official YouTube Live broadcast peaked at nearly 400,000 people during T1’s match. The viewership peaks also took place for Caedrel and the official VCS channel, which was even higher than when the domestic team GAM played their match against FLY.
With the Knockout stage still yet to unfold, we will likely see even higher numbers in the upcoming days, especially if T1 were to play against other top teams. The cross-regional matches and the new Swiss format have been delivering higher stake matches, giving fans more reasons to tune in and watch League of Legends action.
