The League of Legends World Championship 2024 (Worlds 2024) has broken the viewership record for the most-watched esports event ever.
According to esports data platform Esports Charts, the event had a peak viewership of 6.94m, a number that does not include Chinese viewership.
Worlds 2024 concluded over the weekend in London after more than a month of competition in Germany, France and the UK. The event was won by South Korean team T1 in a final series that lasted five games, a fact that also affected the viewership.
In total, the peak viewership of Worlds 2024 was 6.94m, with around 1.73m viewers on average and just under 191m hours watched on 109h of air time.
This makes Worlds 2024 slightly more successful in terms of viewership than the second-placed event, the Worlds 2023. Last year, the peak was at 6.4m and the average viewers were also lower, amounting to around 1.25m. There was also around seven more hours of total airtime.
The increase in viewership can be attributed to several factors, one of which is the popularity of eventual winners, T1. The team was the most watched during Worlds, with 59.5m hours watched. Bilibili Gaming, who finished second, attracted around 51m, followed by Gen.G with 35.3m.
The popularity of T1, and its star player Faker, is proven when it comes to individual player mentions. In the Twitch chat for the grand final series alone Faker was mentioned a record 23,600 times, and the top emote used was also connected to T1.