LCS viewership isn’t doomed. Yet.
To fix viewership, LCS needs to go back to weekends. Even if that means remote broadcasts.
The LCS is in bad shape — viewership is lower than it’s ever been, and it’s beginning to set off serious red flags in the community. Is this the end of the LCS as we know it?
With an average of 66k viewers across the first two weeks, 2023 Summer’s peak viewership was lower than the average viewership this Spring. There’s normally a viewership drop over the course of the year, but this is bleak — currently, Brazil’s CBLOL averages 7k more viewers than the LCS. On the surface, the LCS looks like a dying league, and fans are rightfully afraid that it may never be the same.
As always, though, it isn’t quite as bad as it seems. LCS viewership has been trending down for years — when viewership is contextualized with changes in policy (broadcast timing, competitive format, etc), it helps paint a more complete picture. This summer’s low viewership isn’t the nail in the coffin for the LCS, but it’s a canary in the coal mine. There are, undeniably, a lot of positive signs for the LCS. With the right leadership, the league might actually grow next year.
Viewership metrics make it clear: the LCS could have actually grown its fanbase this year if it hadn’t moved weekday broadcasts. Over the last year, the LCS has made better content, improved its broadcast voice, and gotten far more competitive — the product got better, but horrible policy decisions canceled out the new fandom.
Viewership statistics make a clear point: the LCS must switch back to weekend broadcasts next year. If they don’t, we can start looking into an all-Americas league run out of Sao Paulo.
First, some basic rules of viewership in League. Summer almost always sees lower average viewership than spring, across major and minor regions — notable exceptions include Summer 2020, which saw fewer people heading out for summer vacation than previous years. This also means that viewership should bounce back up between the Summer and Spring splits, meaning that a growing league would see a larger Spring split viewer base than the previous Spring split, and vice versa for a shrinking league.
That said, the LCS’ viewership metrics for the last several years are grim, especially when put alongside the LEC’s stats. For as long as I’ve been watching, the LEC has dwarfed the LCS in fandom, viewership, and (arguably) competitive level, but it’s still likely the closest analog for measuring viewer habits similar to the LCS fandom. The differences between the two are striking.
For the last three years — since the start of COVID — both leagues have seen drops in average annual viewership. Viewership was expected to decrease as the world returned to normal — the LEC had the macabre advantage of a slower COVID recovery for its viewer base (both in Europe, and in East Asia), so it makes sense that their viewership began to drop later than the LCS. However, the LCS’s post-COVID viewership didn’t settle down, it plummeted.
At the start of the year, viewership is expected to rebound back from the Summer split decrease, since viewers return to watch the Spring split. The LEC has seen these viewership jumps every year since 2017, but the LCS hasn’t. A relatively flat graph is misleading — every year, more and more core viewers leave the LCS at a rate much higher than the LEC’s post-COVID adjustment.
The return to the pre-pandemic normal certainly doesn’t explain viewership trends, but broadcast and competitive changes help fill in the gap. 2021 is the perfect demonstration of that fact.
2021 saw the enactment of the “year-long” team scores in the LCS — teams played 45 Bo1s in a long regular season to qualify for the season playoffs. Viewership normally takes a hit in Summer, but this was nearly a 30% drop, surpassed only by this split’s 40% plummet. I was a fan of the LCS back then — I recall tuning out of nearly half the games because they felt so immensely inconsequential. Teams were playing for weeks with their playoffs fate nearly decided.
The 40% plummet this year is also the outcome of a horrendous policy decision. The number is expected to climb as viewers tune in for the Worlds-qualifying matches, but it’s still far too low to maintain the trend of steady (tiny) drops in viewership that the LCS has seen for the last three offseasons. The Spring to Summer viewership drop will still likely be lower than the 20-25% average for the LCS and LEC, but it’s still not ideal.
This is, of course, because games are now being played on Wednesdays — viewership on Wednesdays is abysmal but climbs over the course of the week. Shockingly, it seems people aren’t available to watch the LCS at 2 pm in the middle of the week. Who knew?
Of course, this leads to important questions about the data — why didn’t viewership drop like a rock when games transitioned to weekdays for Spring 2023? As a matter of fact, why didn’t 2022 see the 20-25% expected viewership drop between Spring and Summer?
These drops happened, but they were mitigated by viewership growth. The tiny drop in viewership for 2022 Summer was a quiet victory — the LCS beat the odds and retained 15% more viewers than the LEC. That came off the back of significant changes to the league, from player-focused content to costreams and broadcast guests. Not to mention, of course, that the Spring finals saw a pentakill — and storyline — that will go down in the history of the LCS. Revisionists can deny it all they like, but the LCS was exciting for the first time in years.
By all accounts, this Spring should have also seen a drop in viewership. Riot based their argument for a Thursday/Friday schedule for the LCS around a 12 pm start time for the biggest match of the day. After backlash from the community, the LCS was pushed to 2 pm — a time slot that worked for neither group. Riot wouldn’t be taking advantage of the golden time slot they claimed would save LCS viewership, and fans would still have to watch games on a weekday, which was the core point of protest.
With the biggest matches played at the start of the day, a fan working a 9-5 on the west coast would be able to tune in for the two least interesting matches of the day, assuming they have no commute. The community was certain that the LCS’ viewership was set to enter freefall.
That drop was also mitigated by growth, somehow.
The positive changes from Summer 2022 continued this year — viewership certainly didn’t rise, but a mere 5% drop is a great sign. Fans aren’t done with the LCS — or at least, they don’t want to be. Viewership got worse as the LCS committed further to weekday broadcasts this split, making the solution clear: return to weekends.
It’s not an easy pill to swallow, but this would likely mean remote broadcasts. VCT NA has already claimed the weekend slot, and it was handed to them by the LCS leadership. My understanding, from sources at the LCS, is that they chose to give up the weekend slot this year. I doubt that reclaiming it will be easy — Valorant, and VCT, are growing in NA, and the Americas are internationally competitive in the game.
The Riot Games Arena can’t play two games at once, but I expect that VCT (or LCS) will get its own studio soon enough. For now, the LCS could prove it deserves the spot by going to remote broadcasts — partial studio use or a different space — and seeing the viewership it could achieve when it isn’t actively shooting itself in the foot. As it is, hardly anyone can attend the LCS in person anyway.
It may be a rough transition, but it’s better than the status quo.