Riot has revealed the viewership numbers for the 2020 League of Legends World Championship hosted in Shanghai, China. The event of which was streamed over 21 platforms in 16 languages showed a huge success, to the point where the event managed to beat out the previous record set by 2019's Worlds.
Looking at the data, we can see that the average minute audience totalled 23.04 million viewers. An astonishing number considering the Overwatch League Grand Finals managed to make 1.55 million, which in comparison is much smaller.
Likewise, we can see that the peak concurrent viewership almost reached 46 million viewers, and that the total hours watched for the tournament reached over 1 billion hours. This all suggests great growth for the League of Legends competitive scene, which itself saw an increase of 61.76% year over year viewership during the Play-Ins stage.
"The road to Worlds this year was full of unexpected challenges, from our pivot to a single-city tournament to navigating team travel and quarantines," said John Needham, Global Head of Esports at Riot Games in a press release. "We're extremely proud that we succeeded in our promise to our players and fans to put on the safest and best show possible, and thrilled that our fans responded, allowing us to post record-breaking Play-Ins viewership through the most viewed Worlds Final ever in our 10th year."
Did you watch this year's League of Legends World Championship?
