The LCS Sees Declining Viewership on Twitch
The viewership of the LCS on Twitch has continued to decline for the fifth consecutive week as the league approaches its 2021 Spring Split playoffs.
As the regular season enters its final week, the live coverage of the league on its main Twitch channel has consistently had lower average viewership compared to the previous year.
Last weekend, the main LCS channel on Twitch had an average of 62,942 viewers over 19 hours of live coverage, according to stats from SullyGnome. In comparison, week five of last year averaged 65,954 viewers over 13.7 hours.
The discrepancy in airtime means that this year’s week five accumulated 1.23 million hours watched, higher than last year’s 903,570. However, the increase in airtime was due to more games being played.
In the early part of the season, the decline in viewership didn’t seem significant because of the preseason Lock In tournament, which attracted a lot of attention. However, as the season progresses, it appears that the Lock In may be contributing to the decreasing interest in the Spring Split as a whole.
Furthermore, the condensed schedule of this year’s Spring Split could be overwhelming for fans. Last year, the Split spanned over nine weeks, but this season it is condensed into just six weeks with the same number of games.
With a large number of matches taking place in a shorter time frame each weekend, it’s understandable that the average viewer might not be able to consume all the content the league has to offer.
It is evident that the 2021 Spring Split regular season will have lower viewership overall compared to last year. However, with the help of viewership from the Lock In tournament, the league’s live viewership from January to March could potentially match or surpass that of 2020.
This will largely depend on how much additional viewership the Lock In tournament attracted compared to the three extra weeks of regular season action last year.
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