LCS Struggles With Viewership Numbers, Trails Behind LEC, CBLOL, and LCK

The League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), North America’s LoL league, is struggling with surprisingly low viewership numbers. Halfway through the Spring Split, the LCS’s viewership numbers are some of the lowest of any major region, behind LEC and theLCK.

The LCS kicked off its season way later than other major regions, and it finally reached the halfway mark of the Spring Split.

This is usually an exciting time for the fans who get to see how their teams have done so far and their chances of reaching the playoffs. But unfortunately for the LCS, this is also the time when the league organizers get to check the numbers and how the league has performed amongst viewers.

As one of the four major LoL esports regions, the LCS has reported surprisingly low viewership numbers, highlighting a worrying trend of the North American league. As revealed earlier this week, the LCS has the lowest viewership numbers of all major regions.

According to recent reports, the LCS has an average viewership of only 114,000. Although this might seem like a solid figure, it’s relatively small compared to other leagues of the world.

In contrast, the LoL Champions Korea (LCK) averages 235,000 viewers. Meanwhile, the LoL European Championship (LEC) averages 266,000 viewers, the current highest viewership average in the world.

Interestingly, LCS’s numbers are even lower than Brazil’s CBLOL, which averaged 136,000 viewers. But it doesn’t stop here.

If we look at LCS’ peak viewers for their most-watched games and compare the numbers to other regions, the situation is even worse.

LCS’ most-watched game of 2022 Spring happened in Week 1 between Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses. The match reached 230,000 peak viewers. This might sound like a lot, but it’s a relatively small number compared to other leagues.

In comparison, LCK’s most-watched game between T1 and DWG KIA peaked at 827,000 viewers. Meanwhile, in the LEC, G2 Esports’ first match of the season against Excel peaked at 527,000.

Not only does LCS struggle to catch up to the major regions with its peak viewership numbers, but it also trails some minor leagues.

Most notably, CBLOL saw a peak of 262,000 viewers during FURIA’s clash with LOUD. Moreover, even the LFL and LVP Superliga managed to challenge the LCS with 221,000 and 218,00 peak viewers, respectively.

Many questions need to be asked after reviewing these figures. But the most important one might be what led to this situation.

There are many possible explanations, but one is surely the fact that many big-name players aren’t competing anymore. That includes Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen and Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng.

Besides the absence of big-name players, the second factor contributing to poor viewership numbers is the lack of rivalries. In other words, there are not that many strong teams in the LCS.

Currently, Team Liquid and Cloud9 are the only two teams that have been consistently good. Although you could make a case for Evil Geniuses and 100 Thieves as contenders, the list of exciting teams ends with them.

And on the topic of teams, the two former NA’s strongest organizations in CLG and TSM have fallen on hard times. Seeing CLG struggle isn’t surprising; however, TSM have always been a significant source of viewers.

TSM remain one of the most popular esports organizations in the world. But it’s fair to assume its fans rather not watch their team lose on the Rift.

It remains to be seen now will LCS and Riot Games address the drop in viewership. But it will be interesting to see what their plans for the future are.