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League of Legends Continues to Break
Records |
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This
past weekend saw the final of the 2020 League of Legends World
Finals in Shanghai between the Chinese Suning Gaming, and the Korean
winners of Damwon Gaming. With the 2019 figures benchmark being set very
highly, expectations remained high for this year and it certainly didn’t
disappoint as new records were set with some surprises along the
way.
Perhaps the most surprising difference for the 2020 competition had
been within the streaming platforms relied upon for the event – over the
past decade Twitch had remained the most used in the west as it had continually
pulled in the highest viewership numbers, but this year YouTube had come out on
top with over two million concurrent viewers during the final day. Whilst
Twitch viewership still remained high, with huge growth in the Vietnam market
particularly, whilst fans now await hearing about estimates for Chinese
viewership which will surely put the numbers much higher.
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| (Image from
escharts.com) |
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The coming weeks should also
start to paint a picture into the betting market for the event too as support
for esports betting has been growing over the past few years – with new
sites such as esportsbetting.site
finding growing representation across the events and many of the bigger
operators becoming direct sponsors, it has become safe to assume that betting
figures should also be much higher with this increased viewership too –
many have also become much more likely to bet with the inability to attend live
events across traditional sporting titles too, and it may be likely that this
remains true even in esports as support has found from a growing crossover in
fans.
The split in platform popularity does raise a number of questions
however – with the largest in Twitch starting to fall off in popularity
largely due to controversy around the platform itself and support for YouTube
largely coming from a more casual viewership base, it may leave space in the
market for a newer independent service to fill the space left behind and fill
the gaps where weaknesses and strengths have been found in the other
services.
Something that has been shown throughout the past few months
with the growing number of events that have had to move to a primarily online
base however is that the disruptions caused during the pandemic period have
little impact on the viewership numbers as they have continued to remain high
throughout each event – with many now being postponed until the new year
it may be a little time until more information is given on the next biggest
events to take place across the biggest games in the industry, but if figures
provided by the Worlds event this past weekend are anything to go by then big
things can certainly be expected. With the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
major moved to next year, and the upcoming DoTA2 The International still to
come as the biggest events in those respective games too, esports enthusiasts
and punters certainly have plenty more to be excited for and plenty more
opportunities for viewership and betting too. |
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