It didn’t take more than one day of the 2020 League of Legends World Championship play-in stage until the viewership record of a Worlds play-in game was beaten by Team Liquid and MAD Lions.
Team Liquid vs. MAD Lions peaked at 1,155,657 viewers according to Echarts and is therefore the most-watched play-in game up to now. The start of this year’s Worlds was heavily anticipated by fans who were all ready to cheer for the competing teams, even though many of the most popular teams haven’t even entered the tournament yet.
TOP by languages:@lolesports – 500k@lolesportsbr – 166k@LCK_Global – 152k@lvpes / @lolesportsla – 100k
…@OGTVLoL – 38k@lolespor – @30k@lolesportsru – 30k@PolsatGames – 25k
…#Worlds2020stats #Worlds2020— Esports Charts (@EsportsCharts) September 25, 2020
The Liquid and MAD Lions matchup was on paper the closest of the first day at Worlds and was also the final game of the day. Fans had to wait for five games to watch the NA vs. EU battle, so there was plenty of time to build up the viewership.Â
Luckily, the game lived up to the expectations with a lot of kills and some surprising picks such as Twitch in the bot lane. It was Liquid who got the upper hand in the matchup, which got the LCS fanbase hyped on social media. LEC fans on the other hand were not impressed with the performance of MAD Lions, who looked shaky in their game against INTZ prior to the loss to Liquid.  Â
Not only did Liquid vs. MAD Lions surpass the 1 million peak viewership, so did LGD versus PSG Talon. PCS representative PSG Talon managed to create the biggest upset of the day by beating the fourth LPL seed, which was something that many viewers just had to see.Â
The game peaked at 1,022,841 viewers, which is impressive for a game without any western or Korean teams playing. The numbers are without Chinese viewers, so many Europeans, North Americans, and others tuned in to see PSG Talon shine.Â
All games on day 1 hit over 800,000 peak viewers and it’s very likely that the numbers will be even bigger as the teams get closer to best-of-five series play.Â
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