Credit: lolesports/ Riot Games
Riot Games’ 
top esports leagues, the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) and LoL European Championship (LEC), continued their viewership growth on the developer’s Twitch channel as the Spring Split playoffs kicked off over the weekend.
Live coverage of first-round LEC matches Friday and Saturday averaged 98K CCV, recording 977K hours watched for the weekend. The figure is up significantly from an average of 62K CCV last year and 607K hours watched for the first round of the Spring Split playoffs.
The LCS also saw its year-over-year hours watched boost for the first round as well. The league’s 122K CCV average during live coverage on Riot Games’ Twitch channel resulted in 1.6M hours watched for the weekend, up from 1.28M hours watched in 2018. The league did, however, have a lower average CCV from last year due in part to an increase in airtime as a result of best-of-five matches that lasted longer than in 2018.
” alt=””/>
As opposed to the best-of-one matches that happened in the regular season, each league’s six-team, single-elimination bracket is played exclusively using a best-of-five format. While LEC matches this weekend were relatively short with just seven total games being played, LCS action proved to be more competitive with nine total games being played across its two matches.
Overall, the Riot Games channel reached 3M hours watched for the full week of coverage including reruns with an average of 60K CCV peaking at 243K. In 2018, the channel produced 2.2M hours watched with an average of 62K CCV peaking at 255K.
” alt=””/>
Figures on Riot Games’ main channel don’t reflect the entirety of LEC coverage on Twitch. There are numerous alternative-language broadcast partners for the league that include O’Gaming TV (French), LVP (Spanish), Polsat Games by Frenzy (Polish), Summornser Inn Live by Freaks4U Gaming (German), and PG Esports (Italian). Though these alternatives provide a plethora of options for European viewers, in order to find consistency in year-over-year statistics, growth is measured most effectively using the main Riot Games broadcast.
” alt=””/>
The weekend’s peak viewership of 242K came during the decisive fourth game of Team SoloMid’s
win against Echo Fox . None of the other three matches during the weekend reached a peak over 200K. On The LEC side of things, viewership on Riot Games’ Twitch channel peaked at 148.8K during Fnatic’s 3-0 win against Team Vitality .
