League of Legends Worlds 2022 Play-ins see viewership drop

Worlds 2022 Play-ins viewership has decreased in comparison to 2021, according to a report by Esports Charts.

Twelve teams traveled to Mexico to participate in Worlds Play-ins, and after six days of competition, only four advanced to Worlds 2022 Main Event. For the first time, Play-ins had five teams from major regions, making this stage of the tournament more competitive than ever before. But not even the presence of current Mid-Season Invitational champion RNG attracted enough viewers to break the 2021 record.

Viewership peaked at 1.1 million, 16% less in comparison to 2021. The average viewers’ record took the same hit with 747K, 16% less than the year before. The number of hours watched increased by 8% to reach 38.1 million due to the broadcast delays experienced on day one of the Play-ins.

These numbers are not a sign of Worlds’ decreasing popularity, on the contrary, it shows how important the European and Asian markets are for the event. Play-ins took place in Mexico with matches starting around 10 PM European time and running through at least 4 AM. In South Korea time, matches started around 3 AM. The schedule is not convenient for fans watching from those regions, although, viewership might increase once the most popular teams take the stage.

LOUD, the most popular team at Worlds 2022

Brazilian squad LOUD became the most watched team in Play-ins with 835K average viewers, followed by LCS representative Evil Geniuses with 801K and MAD Lions in third place with 793K.

CBLOL’s twitch channel reported over 3.6 million hours watched, second only to Riot Games’ main channel. The third most watched channel was LLA with 3.2 million hours watched. English, Portuguese, and Spanish were the most common languages during the broadcast. Despite LOUD’s popularity, the encounter between Fnatic and Evil Geniuses was the most watched of Play-ins with 1.1 million peak viewers.

Worlds 2022 will resume on October 7.