The League of Legends 2023 World Championship Becomes the Most Viewed Esports Event of All Time
Everyone is talking about the 2023 League of Legends World Championship. Famous rivalries, intense gameplay and international appeal – this tournament has it all. Years of training and discipline led to the moment 2023’s star players stepped onto the World Championship stage in South Korea. It’s no wonder such a highly anticipated tournament broke concurrent esports event viewership records, but let’s take a deeper look into the statistics – and the near-cinematic character arcs that contributed to the hype.
How many viewers tuned in to the 2023 League of Legends World Championship?
The 2023 League of Legends World Championship was an international tournament held in South Korea. According to Esports Charts at escharts.com, the 2023 World Championship broke the record of peak concurrent viewers of an esports tournament with over 6,400,000 concurrent viewers at peak hours. The viewership record previously belonged to the 2021 Singapore World Series of the mobile game Free Fire, at over 5,415,000 viewers – meaning that the 2023 World Championship attracted over 1 million more watchers. Average viewership exceeded 1,200,000 viewers at a given time, and fans watched over 146,800,000 hours of the event.
Esports Charts does not include data from China due to difficulty measuring it. League of Legends is incredibly popular in China – According to riftfeed.gg, Chinese servers contain more than 75 million accounts. Weibo Gaming, a Chinese team with four Chinese players on its main roster, also scored second place in the event. JD Gaming and Bilibili Gaming, also Chinese teams, were semifinalists. Due to these factors, the actual record-breaking concurrent viewership number is likely much higher than estimated.
What was the outcome of the 2023 League of Legends World Championship?
South Korean team T1 won the 2023 League of Legends World Championship against China’s Weibo Gaming. The final score was 3-0 in favor of T1. T1’s roster included Choi “Zeus” Woo-je, Mun “Oner” Hyeon-jun, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, Lee “Gumayusi” Min-hyeong, Ryu “Keria” Min-seok and Kim “Sky” Ha-neul. Weibo Gaming’s roster contained Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok, Wei “WeiWei” Bo-Han, Li “Xiaohu” Yuan-Hao, Wang “Light” Guang-Yu, Liu “Crisp” Qing-Song and Hung “Karsa” Hao Hsuan.
What made the 2023 League of Legends World Championship special?
To fully grasp the significance of the 2023 League of Legends World Championship, fans must first understand the intense lore behind League of Legends esports and its star player, T1’s Lee “Faker” Sang-Hyeok. The 2023 League of Legends World Championship marks the tenth anniversary of Faker’s first World Championship win in 2013 at 17. In the ten years between the 2013 World Championship and now, Faker has developed intense competition with other players and fought to maintain his spot as the top League of Legends player of all time.
In an almost cinematic arc, Faker has endured a decade-long rivalry with Kim “Deft” Hyuk-Ku, his classmate at his former high school. Deft finally defeated Faker with DRX in the 2022 World Championship, and fans were on the edge of their seat to see if Faker could redeem himself from this fall from grace.
Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok and Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk are other famous nemeses of Faker who participated in the 2023 World Championship. Faker had ruled the League of Legends World Championship as an unstoppable juggernaut, winning three times in 2013, 2015 and 2016 until Ruler ended his reign under Samsung Galaxy in 2017. For six years, Faker trained to reclaim his throne and win a fourth World Championship, and T1’s 2023 win against JD Gaming – and Ruler – brought credence to his training and his infamous statement “All roads lead to me.” Faker and TheShy fought in an intense Grand Finals match, with Faker and T1 prevailing, to the chagrin of TheShy and Weibo Gaming’s massive fanbases.
T1’s 2023 win proved that Faker’s reign – and unprecedented decade-long career – was far from over. The intense discipline, rivalries and poignant backstories behind players like Faker, TheShy, Deft and Ruler in the 2023 League of Legends World Championship reinvigorated fans and brought a spark back to the game that has captivated fans since its introduction in 2009. The matches also played into the friendly rivalry between Korean and Chinese League of Legends teams – international fans are more connected and have more discourse than ever before.
One cannot predict whether the 2023 League of Legends World Championship viewership will reflect in the League of Legends player base’s activity. However, it is reasonable to assume the renewed interest created by the World Championship will encourage further investment in and closer following of the League of Legends esports scene. One thing is for sure – League of Legends remains one of the most popular esports in the world, and that certainly is not changing anytime soon.
