Here are some MSI 2023 Peak Viewership Counts along with the Finals numbers.
MSI 2023 has wrapped up with JDG winning the Finals against BLG. It was an extremely successful tournament with a new format and a great start to international League of Legends competitions.
The new format brought in more major region teams, best-of-series, and double-elimination brackets. This allowed the best teams to be at the tournament’s later stages. The two LCK and LPL teams fought it out in the last few series.
Overall, JDG winning the tournament is much deserved, as they were the best team in MSI 2023. As the tournament has ended, we can now check the viewership numbers on most streaming platforms, courtesy of Esports Charts.
Here are some of the key details, including Finals and Peak viewership, along with the numbers from some of the top games of MSI 2023.
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MSI 2023 Viewership
According to Esports Charts, the tournament has an average viewership of 797k viewers, with a peak of 2.3 million viewers in one series.
Disclaimer: the Chinese viewership numbers are not available as it is very hard to gather the numbers from their respective streaming platforms.
As per Esports Charts, multiple games have had about or more than 1.5 million viewers in those series. The top five games in terms of viewership are as follows.
- T1 vs JDG: 2.297 million viewers.
- T1 vs BLG: 2.181 million viewers.
- T1 vs Gen.G: 1.935 million viewers.
- BLG vs Gen.G: 1.467 million viewers.
- T1 vs MAD: 1.460 million viewers.
It might seem low, but it is an improvement compared to MSI 2022. Let’s break down those numbers.
MSI 2023 vs MSI 2022: Average Viewers
The average viewer number tells the tale. MSI 2023 had 797k average viewers, as mentioned earlier, while MSI 2022 had 588k viewers. This shows how the viewers were more engaged for most of the tournament than MSI 2022.
The format definitely helped with having a lot more good series than the previous iteration. Viewers engaged in the tournament longer as, according to Esports Charts, viewers watched MSI 2023 more than MSI 2022. This is a win for Riot as a whole to get viewers more engaged in the tournaments compared to last year.
MSI 2023 vs MSI 2022: Peak Viewers
In terms of peak viewers, T1 vs JDG in MSI 2023 earned the most viewers, as 2.297 million were watching that series. In contrast, the highest viewership MSI 2022 gained was 2.194 million viewers, and that was the Finals between T1 and RNG. The common denominator is T1, as the team’s viewership is immense all around the world.
MSI 2023 vs MSI 2022: Finals Viewers
However, the biggest disparity was the Finals numbers, as MSI 2023 only had 1.1 million viewers while MSI 2022 had 2.19 million. Again, as per our disclaimer, we could not take Chinese viewership into account. Also, it was an LPL vs LPL series in the Finals. Lastly, this is the 2nd time JDG faced BLG at MSI 2023 and the 4th time so far this year.
Thus for those factors, it is normal for the viewership to be down for the Finals, and it is not alarming that the numbers were low. There has been a lot of doomsaying since the numbers came out, and it was just not analyzed as to how it should be looked at.
Overall Thoughts
MSI 2023 has been a huge success in terms of competition, and it was nice to see a double elimination bracket in LoLEsports. In terms of viewership, it was also much higher on average, and that is a big win.
This year’s MSI had some bad Bracket Stage draw. Thus, if they can improve the seeding and keep the same format, next year’s MSI should be bigger than this year. Overall, we saw a great MSI 2023 and hope this continues to Worlds 2023.
