Marta J. December 2, 2019
League of Legends is the most-watched Twitch game of the year, taking the spot from last year’s top game Fortnite, and pushing it down to second place.
With the 2019 World Championship, the game broke its own viewership records, making it the most-watched League event in the game’s history. Not only does League have the highest total viewership through 2019, it also has the highest average viewership and the highest peak viewership.
Worlds 2019 brings League of Legends to top of Twitch
According to Esports Charts, 2019 Worlds had a 60% increase in average viewership compared to the previous year. The ninth competitive season was overall the most successful, with SullyGnome's data showing over 1.1 million hours watched on Twitch, making for a 13.2% yearly viewership increase.
Besides Riot Games’ official streams, the large viewership was gained over 24,000,000 hours streamed and almost 900,000 channels. In contrast to Fortnite, the second-placed game on the most-watched list that had only 100,000 hours watched less than League, but with an almost three times higher overall stream time and more than 3.3 million streamers combined.
Fortnite falls in Twitch viewership with stars switching to Mixer
At the end of 2018, it was Fortnite that belonged to the top of Twitch. But Fortnite’s biggest star, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, left the platform in August and exclusively moved to Mixer, taking some of his viewers away from Twitch as well.
Riot has been building the sustainable growth pattern behind League for 10 years now, while more and more streamers seem to be getting bored of Fortnite. Its popularity was likely at its peak in 2018 with the battle royale frenzy at full force. And while still continuing to be popular, Fortnite doesn’t seem to be building the same loyalty League has achieved.
Fortnite Season X changes that were implemented to the game this year drove more people away from the gane, although Epic Games still managed to gain high viewership with its black hole event and the start of a new chapter in the game's history.
Other esports titles trail behind LoL and Fortnite
As big esports titles, both League and Fortnite are expected to attract the most viewers. However, other big esports such as Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Overwatch have more room for improvement.
In fact, the next esports title on SullyGnome's most-watched games on Twitch is Dota 2, and it’s only in fifth place with fewer than half of the hours watched compared to the top two. Twitch's Just Chatting genre and Grand Theft Auto V's multiplayer mode reached higher viewership totals than that.