This past month Riot Games finally announced the viewership numbers for the League of Legends 2015 World Championship. Roughly 36 million unique viewers watched the final competition between Korean teams, KOO Tigers and SKTelecom. The number was up from the previous esports viewership record of 32 million from the 2013 World Championship, and much higher than last year’s 27 million viewers (likely due to the fact that last years’ tournament was held in Korea, 3am for U.S. East Coast viewers). For comparison’s sake, the MLB finals and the NBA finals were watched by 15.8 million and 15.5 million viewers respectively.
League of Legends 2015 World Championship Official Logo
This year’s competition also broke the record for concurrent viewers of an esports event. 14 million concurrent viewers as compared to 2014’s 11 million concurrent viewers. So far, every season since the beginning of League of Legend’s competitive scene has improved its simultaneous viewership record year by year. Riot certainly hopes to keep this record improving for as long as they can.
Riot also released the total number of hours viewed of matches throughout the 5 week competition, a total of 360 million hours. Previously the record was 194 million hours in 2014. This bodes well for Riot as this means that more people are tuning in for matches throughout the competition, and not just the extravagantly put on World finals.
Riot is poised to keep growing their highly successful franchise, League of Legends, and have been very supportive of its massive competitive esports scene. Indeed, with Riot Games at the helm, League of Legends is fully expected to continue to lead the way in the esports community.
Featured image courtesy of @EDG_PawN
In-post image provided by LOL Esports TV Youtube channel
