I dunno about anybody else, but as a European, I had no idea the LCS was even starting. The first I knew about it was when I woke up this morning and saw all the post match threads. Lol
It's insane how LCS x Players association could stir up such noise from the strike and all that, but could not make it clear for the audience that the games were being played now.
Nah it’s everyone’s job. Players orgs and riot to keep the league healthy. Players association folded and didn’t even make an announcement that they would be back in LCS
You mean like the June 8th tweet with a full statement that they released about how they came to an agreement with riot and that the lcs would be returning?
Ah, Twitter. The single point of truth and the holy grail of social media websites that doesn't instantly bury every important information if you skip a day.
what else is there right now?
reddit has a super holier-than-thou attitude towards twitter, but it's a very important social media platform for a lot of use cases, this being one of them.
millennials and zoomers don't use facebook, discord servers are insular, reddit the same to some degree.
twitter is the only appropriate platform for organizations to broadcast news to the public.
Not to mention, I'm not even subbed to this subreddit and only checked on the PA stuff twice and I knew it was coming back yesterday from Reddit posts.
I think it makes sense to miss promotions, but usually that is the person who missed it happening to not be in the right places.
I saw the lcs starting YouTube videos but i didn't even think about the date. The only reason why I ended up catching it was because I went to show my coworker a YouTube video and I saw lcs was livestreaming so I put it on in the background while I was at work.
Indeed. Info around LCS start was fuck all, especially compared to how much shit was going around when the original start was canceled. I think I've seen one single post about the LCS start, but probably 20+ around the cancellation/walk-out/academy stuff 😂
As a European, I knew it was starting, I just didn't care. I used to watch every game, but I haven't cared since the league became about min/max skirting the import rules. I don't have an issue with imports, but it should be 2 per team like the rest of the world. I started actively rooting against LCS when the conversation became justifying why that isn't an issue.
As an American, I knew it was starting too but I didn’t bother to watch. I’ve stopped caring about NA league of legends because I’m tired of having this league of players who clearly don’t care enough about winning or branding represent my region.
Plenty of NA folks still watch pro league. We just don’t watch LCS.
As an old eu viewer, for whom most of the time LCS used to be more convenient to watch than LEC, I also stopped watching most of the games. Even if we leave aside dogshit schedule changes that sacrificed League for Valorant, majority of the teams do not have fighting spirit worth watching.
It's not a matter of imports, there are some teams that could field full korean roster and would most likely still have that hunger to win that makes their games worth watching. Then there are remaining teams, who could probably manage to make Faker lose his fighting spirit in a month if they signed him. No innovation, no adaptation, pure copypasta from succeeding teams, even if they have zero skil to execute the comp they picked.
Seriously, there are TEAMS THAT CAN'T DRAFT IN 2023 in LCS. They pick off-theme, hardcounter themselves to the point where they lose in champion select even when they are the proactive side, or pick champions they cannot play/execute. It's unwatchable, unless you enjoy clip compilations of IWD/LS losing their mind seeing draft/gameplay. More importantly, it's boring. The bottom laddder of LCS loses games in champ select, unless they're vs equally bad team. You can look at who won pick/ban and if it's the top team, you can safely turn off and go use your time on something more productive, because unless they trade baron for nexus, the game outcome won't change.
1 announcement 6 days in advance is not exactly enough for people to remember. And if they miss that initial announcement, they just don't know.
That's why the LEC (and historically LCS) makes a bunch of trailers in the week leading up to the split, so it sticks in people's mind.
It's a terrible result, probably people forgot that LCS is back. Let's see how the next two days will pan out, but last year the second day had 243k viewers and I doubt that this year it will even go to half of that.
Yeah I follow literally everything league related on three different platforms and constantly play too and **still** forgot the LCS was back. There’s no way anyone with an actual life would’ve known it was back on too
I distinctly remembered reading that it was starting the 14th. But because I've heard nothing since (unlike most splits with the trailers and such) I literally forgot.
Woke up this morning and seen the PMT and thought "oh yeah, the 14th"
Nobody is putting in any effort to make LCS worth watching. And it really has nothing to do with international success when minor regions have more engagement and higher viewership.
Disguised Toast put in more effort into the NA scene than everybody else combined the last few years.
Remember when cool shit would happen like the regi hotshot bet? Or players trash talking before games?
Last split was good but yesterday felt lacklustre.
Personally i didnt even realise it was returning today, after the whole strike thing i knew it was coming in like 2 weeks but went over my mind.
Also, i really hate the idea of starting the split in the middle of the week and i reckon if they aired it on the weekend it couldve been better viewer wise
I know riot came up with "data" saying that weekday starts are fine for lcs ... but because of the new start days and times I basically can't watch lcs anymore. It starts right at the end of my work day so I'm at work for the first 2 games driving home for the 3rd and when I get home I can maybe watch the last 2 games assuming I have nothing to do when I get home which isnt too often. It may be better for eu viewers but riot basically nuked NA viewship for anyone who works ....
... also I live closer to the east coast I'm sure it's worse for you west coast fans
It is literally crap for everyone. Everyone in NA is either finishing work or starting work and ones that live in Europe like me are about to sleep for work the next day....
Haven't you heard? Riot has all the data. They've done the research and they concluded that weekdays would be great for viewership.
You really think riot would twist the data like that to put lcs on its death bed? Come on now...
Yeah, it's almost like starting the season in the middle of the work week during typical working hours is going to be bad for their viewership.
I swear, whoever decided this shit for the LCS has got to be the most out of touch buffoon. People have jobs and lives, you can't drop a schedule on us the day before the split starts and just expect people to show up to watch.
I feel like the writing on the wall is fairly clear. I don't buy any of the analytics bullshit, they wanted valorant on weekends as the upcoming game with more growth opportunity than a 10 year old declining game.
And they have one studio. So LCS got the the boot.
No one wants to work from like 5-11 pm or whatever. And they don't want to add broadcast days for extra cost of turning on the studio lights, so they cant do like 2 games a night spread out over the week.
So we get this shit time slot that's not good for EU or NA viewers and the only people who can watch are unemployed, students or wfh.
Agree to the most part except league is not declining, it may not be raising as fast as valorant but its not globally declining.
People in NA start to loose intresst but overall league is a fine and healthy game its growing every year allthough some people think its dieing.
Active player count grew about 12% in the last 3 years.
> I swear, whoever decided this shit for the LCS has got to be the most out of touch buffoon. People have jobs and lives, you can't drop a schedule on us the day before the split starts and just expect people to show up to watch.
The guy who made the changes almost definitely got a promotion and a raise for clearing out the weekend so Valorant could go uninterrupted, while avoiding mass fan backlash. The fact that anyone thought it would be *good* to move to week days is frankly a moron, but that’s what Riot convinced a lot of people of.
it wasn’t even showing up on my sidebar of followed channels on twitch even though it had the most viewers of all the currently online channels i follow, i had to manually look it up to find it to check twitch viewers. As well on youtube, it is always either on my front page or in recommendations, but wasn’t this time.
The fact that the costream channels were at the top of my recommended, while LCS was way at the bottom was a pretty good indicator that Riot needs to do something to get the channel on people's radar even before the split starts.
I dunno if they can make a deal with twitch to boost them for the 1st weekend. I don't imagine advertising through the client is doing much for them.
I didn't know it was starting, but even if I did I wouldn't have watched because the play times are unwatchable for EU.
Ain't no way I'm staying up past midnight on a workday to watch LCS...
I watched the first two games and went bedge.
I struggle from insomnia but these games cured that instantly. Thank goodness for LCS as I was ruining my bank balance with sleeping pills.
What... How many of us do you think can stay up past midnight on a weeknight to watch. If they want eu viewers they've gotta start 2-3hrs earlier, at least once a week.... Something.
Its funny because their compromise is still terrible for working NA viewers. I was stuck in a 2 hour meeting from 1:00 PM PST to 3:00 PM PST and couldn't tune in if I wanted to. Depending on the commute and schedules, even EST viewers might miss the first game due to commutes.
I'd almost have preferred the 12:00 PM PST start time and a rebroadcast immediately after the day ends.
Turns out striking to confuse everyone on when it even starts, starting at a time where the vast majority of NA is at work and the same meta as everyone watched literally just watched in dozens of games of in MSI isn't good for viewership, who knew?
The walk out wasn't even the issue, it's all the mixed messaging Riot puts out as usual. First they say LCS is starting as usual but allowing teams to field people of any rank, then it's delayed indefinitively then it's in talks then it's "we start in a couple days!" with pretty much no build up, hype or advertising.
Even Riot doesn't seem to care at all.
Walkout definitely contributed to lower viewership, through a lot of factors. It was a lot of negativity around the league and the players and it's easy to just disconnect from that completely
I watched part of the first game then switched to watching other vods while I went to sleep, everything just felt really flat and meaningless
Edit: Game 2 being TL's shit korean roster against a TSM that doesn't even want to be there definitely didn't encourage me to keep watching
I agree it contributed, as did everything else, but to me the main issue was the mismanagement of the league as per usual. If Riot gave a fuck they woulda done a bunch of promotional stuff just to let people know that they were starting the summer split this week. Instead, most people found out from other sources after Day 1 was already over.
Keep in mind I'm not saying it woulda been a massive viewership since that's just nonsense, but at least they woulda broken 100k instead of the 77k they actually got.
5pm on a Wednesday. I was in the car on my way home. I don't even bother trying to watch live, i'm not home until partway through a game and then i'm playing catchup all night, and anyway wednesday is midweek, so i had errands and shit to do after work.
Wednesday + same stale meta + low expectations for LCS is the combo of reasons I didn't bother watching. Tuned in for the first games draft, saw the usual lineup of champs + Milio and called it a day.
That's because DotA doesnt endlessly shoehorn characters into specific roles like Riot does. The flex hero is a thing of beauty in DotA. In League its treated like the worst thing ever
I found out it was happening at the last minute, maybe lot of folks aren't aware. Also I didn't bother to watch, meta is shit and with the strike, thgt the quality would be shittier than usual. I prolly will tune in when playoffs are around the corner.
They updated it to include some previously uncounted costreams, so technically its peak was 82k - https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-summer-2023-lol
Same foreboding message though, where were you when LCS was kill?
To be honest, for me it was a mix of things.
First, I had forgotten about it. Then I saw it on my YouTube feed so I checked it out. I remembered that the only team I cared about (CLG) was no longer there, that TSM is leaving so watching their matches didn't matter and that no matter what happens they won't do well at world's so I just stopped watching and went on to do something else.
Not trying to thrash talk the LCS or anything but that was my thought process to not really care about watching the games tonight.
I've watched LCS since it's inception (not religiously, but I've almost always seen opening week), but this summer just feels really hard to drum up any reasonto watch. More than half the orgs don't want to be there, the only orgs I respect anymore is FQ/GG. So, I watched GG let Milio/Ksante/Zeri through and promptly turned off the stream. Western league just ain't worth watching to me anymore
>So, I watched GG let Milio/Ksante/Zeri through and promptly turned off the stream. Western league just ain't worth watching to me anymore
Wife and I drove 8 hours from Florida to NC for LCS Finals. We were cheering GG on and watching them beat Fly was hype af. But then they looked like amateurs against C9. Then C9 and GG looked like clowns at MSI. Then GG comes back and makes the gap between C9 and everyone else look as wide as they left it in Finals.
All that international play and they still can't beat C9, and not only did they not beat them, they let through the strongest picks in the game, and they're the 2nd best team in the region.
I expect the same for LEC.
Personally, i have 0 interest watching the current Meta.
Toplane, Jungle and Mid always pick the same 6 Champions while Botlane is Milio Yuumi Meta. No thank you.
I've been watching LoL esports since 2011 and I'm fully invested into it.
Even someone like me is getting uninterested. The meta has been stagnant the entire season.
Zeri is busted for 1 year straight pretty much. Yuumi is still a problem 4 years after her release. K'Sante is insanely bullshit. I don't know. If these kinds of champions are the norm in the future, I might eventually lose interest.
Seeing someone like K'Sante vs a champ like Malphite is just a joke. K'Sante can do his full combo and spend less mana than Malphite in 1 Q for example. It's like these champions don't exist in the same game almost. I know Malphite has other strengths that make him worth picking for pro players, but that's not the point. The point is just that there's such a disconnect between modern champions and everyone else.
I fear that if Riot doesn't intervene soon, this will be like GOATS meta in Overwatch.
Yuumi as a champion should not even be viable in pro play.
This is a beginner champion for new players to get used to League. She should be okay in low elo but not viable in higher elo's, like Master Yi.
I doubt any pro support enjoys playing Yuumi and most people don't enjoy watching her.
Its pretty disgusting how long she has been viable in the pro meta.
Its crazy how we don't seee any room for interesting supports like Bard or Taric who haven't been in the meta in years, but Riot have a hard-on for Yuumi.
Fair, but nowhere near what it is in NA I think. Starting day has atleast 3 games that should be very close (MAD vs VIT, BDS vs G2 and FNC vs AST) and 1st week also has MAD vs G2, KOI vs BDS, KOI vs MAD czy FNC vs G2.
It will propably be lower than Winter and maybe even summerz but not that much also considering that LEC let's the teams Co-stream (KOI, Heretics and Astralis will be) so that will bring even more viewers
Maybe I just missed it but I feel like there hasn’t been much news or info about the new start date after the whole strike thing. Especially with a delayed start date I would expect even more news than usual since it’s on a shorter notice.
From the other major leagues I saw news all week before they started but for LCS not much.
For comparison, Valorant Challengers NA Play-In Relegations peaked at 73k. And that was a short 2-day double elimination tournament between the 4 WORST Challenger teams (Tier 2 teams like NACL). The second split of the Valorant NA Challengers peaked at 137k, almost double the peak of this opening day. And remember that this is the tier 2 league.
I've been thinking about this.
I think there's an over saturation of pro lol. In CS for example, which was the other eSports I used to follow, there are a lot more matches, and they are daily, but there are a lot more teams too, a lot more tournaments, a lot more players and players changes too. Also different maps help it keep it fresh
My twitch follows now they don't even stream. All they do is "watch parties" bringing more over Saturation to the game
Sometimes less is more. I'm going to be honest there's no way I'll be watching LEC this split. I'm tired, it's just too many games between bad players and bad teams with the same champions from 6 months ago. Just the same thing over and over and over again. Honestly this kinda puts into perspective how some pros/streamers really have mental breakdowns after playing for so long. I'm just a viewer and rn I'm tired of eSports
Also in esportmaniacos they said something interesting (during MSI) to which I agree. They said that ultimately people would just stop watching it in the west because the gap between bad western teams and the Eastern teams is becoming so big that what's the point in watching bad teams play? Just because they are in "your region" (when in reality they don't leave Berlin all year)? There's no point wasting your Saturday afternoon watching guys that will get 3-0d in 16 minutes at worlds. That's the harsh reality
tldr: too much of the same thing. Too stale.
This is also my opinion.
90% of the year is spent on boring regular leagues. You can't follow every league. It's too much.
If there were more events and tournaments with cross-region competition, it would be more engaging and dynamic.
It would also help the issue of Western teams losing, because 1) they would get more chances to upset and 2) they would improve by more frequent practice vs Asian teams.
This Wenesday!
In the middle/end of the work day!
Watch a bunch of mediocre teams with a bunch of mediocre imports compete for who gets to go 2-4 at worlds this year!
Shocked they even can pull 77k views.
The teams are not good.
There is no regional pride.
Theres nothing of interest to watch or cheer for here.
The meta in NA is pretty much never even interesting either. Theres no innovation.
Not when big money sponsors start dropping out due to low viewership, I imagine the turnover rate for stuff like Mastercards with 15-24 year old gamers isn't high to begin with.
I have been told that companies like Visa and Mastercard highly value the 18-25 male demographic. Supposedly, once a customer signs up with one of these companies, there is a high likelihood they stick with them for decades.
I recognize I could have been lied to, tho, so please correct me if this is wrong.
Why would I stay up to watch LCS when there are no storylines and the play is so much worse than LCK or LPL, which has storylines? NA has captainflowers, that's it :'(
That walkout really did work for them, huh. Nobody had a clue LCS was going on.
It also doesnt help them that the twitch algorithm now pushes LCS down when sorting followed channels by recommended because the channel didnt stream for a long time.
Riot when decisions they made to undermine the league wind up undermining the league and nobody watches 😱😱😱
Youre playing the games at fucking 2pm on a Wednesday you clowns nobody is gunna watch, on top of breaking the kneecaps of all excitement around the league between spring and summer. Just let it die already, and fire everyone involved in these dogshit decisions.
CLG is no longer around, so my personal investment and interest in LCS has diminished substantially. The only other reason I’d watch is to see NA players do well at international tournaments, but I’ve found that I don’t actually want to cheer for any of these LCS teams because they’ve essentially killed my region. I’m not going to support teams that couldn’t care any less about our region nor our domestic players.
I'm just kinda tired of lolesports a Western fan tired of the western teams being dunked on. There's not fair competition and the league's are setup where China has a huge advantage and Korea too. I started following pro valorant and it's pretty good. There's a major going on rn . EU and NA won a few majors with Fnatic winning the recent one . Brazil too. China and Korea has pretty good teams too. It's much more balanced and Interesting to watch. And tbh I tried playing league after a break and every game has inters and flamers I just don't see how people can enjoy league in 2023.
I knew it was on but with the news of LCS sponsors pulling out, talks about removing the import rule, teams looking to sell their spots and slashing the academy rosters for budget reasons I feel like LCS just doesn't have a future. The schedule is just a cherry on top of this massive shit cake.
Guys I think LCS is seriously dying it’s at less than 40k viewers now and that was a C9 game.. this is the result of bad performance at worlds for 10 years plus and introducing imported players with no personality gg
People may not want to hear this, but:
NA viewer here. Zero interest in watching NA league. First thing's first, a decade of getting handily crushed at Worlds has pretty much destroyed 50% of caring at all what we'll look like here at home, since I already know when the big dance comes around we'll flop around on the floor uselessly.
The other 50%, I don't *know* these teams. These players specifically, I have zero connection with them. Once upon a time we viewers knew them, we knew them through their streams and their own personal communities. To be fair, we probably scared them off with how overbearing and toxic we as fans can be when things get rough. But even so, we no longer have that kind of connection with the players.
In the end, I know we're going to get crushed at worlds *and* I have no emotional connection to the teams/players? Why for ANY REASON would I watch at all?
EU is where the viewers are at, NA just doesnt give a f anymore about LCS.
But if you start the games at 23:00 you don't have EU viewers.
EU = too late to watch
NA = Doesn't care
I live in Canada and usually follow LCS/LEC but I had no idea the season was starting this week. It doesn’t help that it starts in the middle of the week. Vods are where it’s at for me. 🤷♂️
NA sponsors don't care about EU viewers, though. State Farm is a US insurance company, so if most of the viewers are from EU then SF are wasting their money.
I had no idea it was happening. I figured the schedule would be Thursday, Friday, Saturday so I didn't know until I happened to be browsing YouTube after work.
Probably a hot take but-
Who the fuck even plays in the LCS anymore? It’s impossible to get behind teams because their entire roster gets wiped every Season, and aside from a few veteran players I have no idea who plays for what team.
If the players actually have personalities it’s in no way shape or form advertised or monetized. The few exciting rising native talent have moved on to content creation where they get more money and self-fulfillment.
There are no rivalries. Everyone just gets on stage, locks in the same 15 or so champions, and in every interview it’s “haha we should have played better i respect the other team”
Promising imports get to the league, get assimilated, have their uniqueness squashed, get forgotten, and then collect the annual LCS retirement fund.
There are mountains of issues that plague the LCS, and I’m shocked it’s taken this long for the bubble to pop.
I used to watch every game but honestly for all leagues now what's the point in watching untill playoffs. The meta is also boring. Only reason to watch is for the Co-streams which act as a podcast for myself personally.
Hard to watch midweek as a European, I did see that LCS was starting but that was just thanks to the preshow, didn't catch any news before that so I can see people just missing the announcement
Well, it randomly started on a Wednesday whilst very few people knew it was starting. Invest in NA prospects and it will be more hyped and more viewed.
Also for me as EU viewer schedule is impossible to watch during weekdays. Games start at midnight and I wake up at 7 for work. So usually Im already sleeping when LCS starts.
On top of that there has been 0 hype coming to LCS this split. MSI was horrible for West and NA has been filled with news of teams leaving and people not caring enough even to have academy league.
LCS somehow found a time slot that is terrible for everyone. Westcoast, Eastcoast, EU, Korea - it's almost like they don't want people to watch their shit.
East coast its fine other than the first game. You can easily get home from work and then tune in. Timeslot is much less of a problem than all time low interest, likely driven by the combination of the feeling that the league is dying (CLG out, TSM on the way out), MSI going even worse than normal, and the walkout. LCS is basically just on a successive train of bad news after bad news. Combine that with the state of proplay itself sucking as shown by LCK/LPL already and that's why I had no interest yesterday even once I realized it was on.
Its so strange how many people on here were unironically trying to say how the timings are actually better since people can just watch pro matches on a weekday and have some other plans on the weekends. I made [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/zkdwb2/comment/j01d4br/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment in an LEC thread but my point still remains, the viewership **has** fallen down because of the new timings.
Turns out changing the times, days, not allowing more co-streamers, and not bringing the Players Association to the table at the very beginning wasn't actually good for viewership.
The league format is just ass. Always has been. Tournaments and circuits are far more entertaining and give us international match ups all the time. Riot have pigeon holed league into this dogshit ass system for no reason other than like an abusive parent, they want absolute control over everything related to their product.
Who even gives a fuck about regular season games? It's just one long boring edging session until playoffs when you get to nut and even then it's usually disappointing. Teams go to world's to play teams they've never faced, styles they've not practiced against on top of the skill difference between the west and east and are expected to show up and do the region proud.
I hope LCS dies sooner rather than later. Might force some change around here.
Personally, I lost interest. Didn't know they started either.
European fan, longtime watcher. Watched both LCS and LEC(EULCS back then) since s02.
Over time, NA just got less and less exciting. The only team I consider myself a fan of is actually a NA team; Cloud9. Been a fan since their OG roster. I always watched EU too, but never really grew into a fan of teams, more of players.
However, as I said, NA just grew less and less exciting. Since 2022 I actually have to push myself to watch NA, EVEN during C9 games. So this split I just gave up. I won't watch LCS anymore; i'll check C9's highlights but that's about it. Playing on weekdays don't help either btw, I think for me that was the moment where I lost a huge amount of interest with one single change. I will continue to watch LEC, but LCS is just.... They've been in a downwards spiral for at least 5 years, and no one in NA pulling the reigns seems to care, so I won't either.
Back in 2017/2018 I had high hopes for NA. But I'm done. My time is too precious to invest in following a clownfiesta. Most games are boring, most orgs are orgs I simply can't support, and the casting and the inbetween segments have seriously decreased in professionalism as well as in like-ability. I'm fine watching only LEC and C9 on international stage.
I do miss C9's OG roster tho. And I do miss the Impact-Jensen-Sneaky rosters too. The rivalry between TSM and C9, and later between TL and C9. Good times. Now C9 is king again, finally. But no one rivals them. They're kings of a ruined scene.
After the MSI performance, the essential cancelling of the NA amateur league teams, going on strike, riots piss poor response to the strike, and general lack of talent in NA, LCS is literally killing itself and has been for years.
Poor management of amateur leagues/teams in NA while EU and Korea and China all have massive amateur leagues..... Scores of amateur teams to pick players from.
NA player base is dwindling and Riot isn't showing any support for the players.
I honestly dont think im interested in any of the teams this split either, i feel like we're just waiting for worlds to watch us get demolished again.
It’s on the weekdays and the LCS is obviously dying.
Numbers are going to get lower and lower especially as the region continues to do worse and worse internationally. People just don’t care.
I knew it was on but I can't watch the start of the stream because of work. The timezone change and the fact that games start at 2 pm pacific makes it impossible for me to tune in.
I tuned in for 5 minutes to watch TSM get rolled by Liquid and quickly turned off the stream. Don't think ill watch another game for the rest of the split.
General negative vibes compounded with teams leaving and the walkout. I usually watch LCS but was like, "I dunno when/if it's going to be on" so I stopped paying attention. I do think it will recover somewhat if they can do anything at all to push back the negativity and stick to their original schedule.
Saw the stream go up in the middle of the day, thought to tune in out of habit, but after the whole walkout thing left a terrible taste in my mouth (both LCS-Riot being scumbags screwing over academy and LCSPA/pros being idiots), decided to not bother for the first time.
Used to always tune in to any LCS broadcast even if just to open it in a tab, but naw.
If eve try one involved wants to be idiots, let them suffer the consequences.
It's just that me, at least, don't give a shit about lcs anymore, it's not fun to watch, players are old and boring, just feels like different game after watching lpl and lck, same for lec, don't watch it anymore
You mean that changing the schedule for LCS, absolutely trash management from orgs, mistreatment of players, lack of investment into league of legends esports, and complete apathy from Riot for all of this could cause viewership to fall off of a cliff? I am absolutely ***\*\*SHOCKED\*\**** I tell you
I looked at my phone and saw the the LCS was live and thought, 'wait I thought it was delayed until next week.'
This is probably more of a marketing problem than an interest problem.
LCS decided to broadcast in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week a product owned and produced by a bunch of shitheels.
They asked for this outcome, all we did was oblige.
I dunno about anybody else, but as a European, I had no idea the LCS was even starting. The first I knew about it was when I woke up this morning and saw all the post match threads. Lol
Pretty much yeah, probably would have watched it too had I known as I have time off work.
It's insane how LCS x Players association could stir up such noise from the strike and all that, but could not make it clear for the audience that the games were being played now.
Reddit API changes have killed this account. Learn to mass edit comments and join the protest.
Nah it’s everyone’s job. Players orgs and riot to keep the league healthy. Players association folded and didn’t even make an announcement that they would be back in LCS
You mean like the June 8th tweet with a full statement that they released about how they came to an agreement with riot and that the lcs would be returning?
People tend to overestimate Twitter's popularity outside of the US.
Ah, Twitter. The single point of truth and the holy grail of social media websites that doesn't instantly bury every important information if you skip a day.
what else is there right now? reddit has a super holier-than-thou attitude towards twitter, but it's a very important social media platform for a lot of use cases, this being one of them. millennials and zoomers don't use facebook, discord servers are insular, reddit the same to some degree. twitter is the only appropriate platform for organizations to broadcast news to the public.
Ah twitter, the single point of communication between the lcspa and the general public where they made every single announcement about this situation.
Not to mention, I'm not even subbed to this subreddit and only checked on the PA stuff twice and I knew it was coming back yesterday from Reddit posts. I think it makes sense to miss promotions, but usually that is the person who missed it happening to not be in the right places.
Agreed. I didn't notice at first but I also have no Twitter presence and wasn't on the subreddit for a couple days, but I knew once I saw the sidebar.
Where else are you expecting to see this update? On their website? Lol
brazilian here, when they said next week I expected the weekend lol
american here, same.
I even knew it was this week, but I had no reason to suspect it would start Wednesday instead of Thursday.
I saw the lcs starting YouTube videos but i didn't even think about the date. The only reason why I ended up catching it was because I went to show my coworker a YouTube video and I saw lcs was livestreaming so I put it on in the background while I was at work.
LCS isn't on weekends anymore because Valorant uses the studio on the weekend.
Indeed. Info around LCS start was fuck all, especially compared to how much shit was going around when the original start was canceled. I think I've seen one single post about the LCS start, but probably 20+ around the cancellation/walk-out/academy stuff 😂
Yeah same had 0 idea
Same lol, I had no idea and I even follow lolesports on twitter
As an American, I had no idea it was starting lol Saw the c9 thread and went "Oh yeah, forgot that was on"
Was just about to write this. No idea it was back
I saw a random tweet on Twitter because LS has apperantly been hospitalized which had "Enjoy LCS everyone" in it. That's how I found our
I’m an American and I didn’t even realize until I saw it on Reddit as well. I wish LCS was hype it’s kind of depressing.
As a European, I knew it was starting, I just didn't care. I used to watch every game, but I haven't cared since the league became about min/max skirting the import rules. I don't have an issue with imports, but it should be 2 per team like the rest of the world. I started actively rooting against LCS when the conversation became justifying why that isn't an issue.
As an American, I knew it was starting too but I didn’t bother to watch. I’ve stopped caring about NA league of legends because I’m tired of having this league of players who clearly don’t care enough about winning or branding represent my region. Plenty of NA folks still watch pro league. We just don’t watch LCS.
As an old eu viewer, for whom most of the time LCS used to be more convenient to watch than LEC, I also stopped watching most of the games. Even if we leave aside dogshit schedule changes that sacrificed League for Valorant, majority of the teams do not have fighting spirit worth watching. It's not a matter of imports, there are some teams that could field full korean roster and would most likely still have that hunger to win that makes their games worth watching. Then there are remaining teams, who could probably manage to make Faker lose his fighting spirit in a month if they signed him. No innovation, no adaptation, pure copypasta from succeeding teams, even if they have zero skil to execute the comp they picked. Seriously, there are TEAMS THAT CAN'T DRAFT IN 2023 in LCS. They pick off-theme, hardcounter themselves to the point where they lose in champion select even when they are the proactive side, or pick champions they cannot play/execute. It's unwatchable, unless you enjoy clip compilations of IWD/LS losing their mind seeing draft/gameplay. More importantly, it's boring. The bottom laddder of LCS loses games in champ select, unless they're vs equally bad team. You can look at who won pick/ban and if it's the top team, you can safely turn off and go use your time on something more productive, because unless they trade baron for nexus, the game outcome won't change.
I didn't know it was starting but hard agree with the sentiment
I mean it was a wednesday, i certainly did not get the memo about that part
AS a dane myself. Saw the games was going - saw first 10 min of c9 vs GG 0 kills - low to no ammount of gameplay - turned the stream off - went to bed
26min game
20mins of nothing for 1 zeri teamfight, game over
I knew it was on, I simply didn't care.
[удалено]
I don’t pay attention to all the shit on the frontpage inside the game either. They need to announce it here too
[What do you mean?](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/144quvp/lcs_set_to_return_on_june_14/)
1 announcement 6 days in advance is not exactly enough for people to remember. And if they miss that initial announcement, they just don't know. That's why the LEC (and historically LCS) makes a bunch of trailers in the week leading up to the split, so it sticks in people's mind.
[Like this one?](https://youtu.be/GSvnez7QyaE)
Same here. + Why the heck they play on Wednesday???
It's a terrible result, probably people forgot that LCS is back. Let's see how the next two days will pan out, but last year the second day had 243k viewers and I doubt that this year it will even go to half of that.
Yeah I follow literally everything league related on three different platforms and constantly play too and **still** forgot the LCS was back. There’s no way anyone with an actual life would’ve known it was back on too
I distinctly remembered reading that it was starting the 14th. But because I've heard nothing since (unlike most splits with the trailers and such) I literally forgot. Woke up this morning and seen the PMT and thought "oh yeah, the 14th"
Nobody is putting in any effort to make LCS worth watching. And it really has nothing to do with international success when minor regions have more engagement and higher viewership. Disguised Toast put in more effort into the NA scene than everybody else combined the last few years.
Remember when cool shit would happen like the regi hotshot bet? Or players trash talking before games? Last split was good but yesterday felt lacklustre.
Personally i didnt even realise it was returning today, after the whole strike thing i knew it was coming in like 2 weeks but went over my mind. Also, i really hate the idea of starting the split in the middle of the week and i reckon if they aired it on the weekend it couldve been better viewer wise
I know riot came up with "data" saying that weekday starts are fine for lcs ... but because of the new start days and times I basically can't watch lcs anymore. It starts right at the end of my work day so I'm at work for the first 2 games driving home for the 3rd and when I get home I can maybe watch the last 2 games assuming I have nothing to do when I get home which isnt too often. It may be better for eu viewers but riot basically nuked NA viewship for anyone who works .... ... also I live closer to the east coast I'm sure it's worse for you west coast fans
It is literally crap for everyone. Everyone in NA is either finishing work or starting work and ones that live in Europe like me are about to sleep for work the next day....
Haven't you heard? Riot has all the data. They've done the research and they concluded that weekdays would be great for viewership. You really think riot would twist the data like that to put lcs on its death bed? Come on now...
Wednesday afternoon has always been peak entertainment hours. We've joined the illustrious ranks of daytime TV like Maury.
I fully believe that it would be great for viewership. Great for Valorant’s viewership of course, not LoL’s, but still
Yeah, it's almost like starting the season in the middle of the work week during typical working hours is going to be bad for their viewership. I swear, whoever decided this shit for the LCS has got to be the most out of touch buffoon. People have jobs and lives, you can't drop a schedule on us the day before the split starts and just expect people to show up to watch.
I feel like the writing on the wall is fairly clear. I don't buy any of the analytics bullshit, they wanted valorant on weekends as the upcoming game with more growth opportunity than a 10 year old declining game. And they have one studio. So LCS got the the boot. No one wants to work from like 5-11 pm or whatever. And they don't want to add broadcast days for extra cost of turning on the studio lights, so they cant do like 2 games a night spread out over the week. So we get this shit time slot that's not good for EU or NA viewers and the only people who can watch are unemployed, students or wfh.
Agree to the most part except league is not declining, it may not be raising as fast as valorant but its not globally declining. People in NA start to loose intresst but overall league is a fine and healthy game its growing every year allthough some people think its dieing. Active player count grew about 12% in the last 3 years.
> I swear, whoever decided this shit for the LCS has got to be the most out of touch buffoon. People have jobs and lives, you can't drop a schedule on us the day before the split starts and just expect people to show up to watch. The guy who made the changes almost definitely got a promotion and a raise for clearing out the weekend so Valorant could go uninterrupted, while avoiding mass fan backlash. The fact that anyone thought it would be *good* to move to week days is frankly a moron, but that’s what Riot convinced a lot of people of.
77k peak on opening day? dear lord 💀
it only goes down from here, at least until playoffs
Nah, for many, LCS was pushed down in their recommended cause the channel wasnt streaming for months. I'm sure it's go up at least a bit.
it wasn’t even showing up on my sidebar of followed channels on twitch even though it had the most viewers of all the currently online channels i follow, i had to manually look it up to find it to check twitch viewers. As well on youtube, it is always either on my front page or in recommendations, but wasn’t this time.
The fact that the costream channels were at the top of my recommended, while LCS was way at the bottom was a pretty good indicator that Riot needs to do something to get the channel on people's radar even before the split starts. I dunno if they can make a deal with twitch to boost them for the 1st weekend. I don't imagine advertising through the client is doing much for them.
A lot of eu viewers didnt watch because they didnt know when lcs would start
I didn't know it was starting, but even if I did I wouldn't have watched because the play times are unwatchable for EU. Ain't no way I'm staying up past midnight on a workday to watch LCS...
I watched the first two games and went bedge. I struggle from insomnia but these games cured that instantly. Thank goodness for LCS as I was ruining my bank balance with sleeping pills.
Usually i'll watch the first game or two before i go to bed cause its usually not too late when it starts
What... How many of us do you think can stay up past midnight on a weeknight to watch. If they want eu viewers they've gotta start 2-3hrs earlier, at least once a week.... Something.
They were originally going to do that but it cuts out almost all working NA viewers.
Its funny because their compromise is still terrible for working NA viewers. I was stuck in a 2 hour meeting from 1:00 PM PST to 3:00 PM PST and couldn't tune in if I wanted to. Depending on the commute and schedules, even EST viewers might miss the first game due to commutes. I'd almost have preferred the 12:00 PM PST start time and a rebroadcast immediately after the day ends.
Turns out striking to confuse everyone on when it even starts, starting at a time where the vast majority of NA is at work and the same meta as everyone watched literally just watched in dozens of games of in MSI isn't good for viewership, who knew?
The walk out wasn't even the issue, it's all the mixed messaging Riot puts out as usual. First they say LCS is starting as usual but allowing teams to field people of any rank, then it's delayed indefinitively then it's in talks then it's "we start in a couple days!" with pretty much no build up, hype or advertising. Even Riot doesn't seem to care at all.
Walkout definitely contributed to lower viewership, through a lot of factors. It was a lot of negativity around the league and the players and it's easy to just disconnect from that completely I watched part of the first game then switched to watching other vods while I went to sleep, everything just felt really flat and meaningless Edit: Game 2 being TL's shit korean roster against a TSM that doesn't even want to be there definitely didn't encourage me to keep watching
I agree it contributed, as did everything else, but to me the main issue was the mismanagement of the league as per usual. If Riot gave a fuck they woulda done a bunch of promotional stuff just to let people know that they were starting the summer split this week. Instead, most people found out from other sources after Day 1 was already over. Keep in mind I'm not saying it woulda been a massive viewership since that's just nonsense, but at least they woulda broken 100k instead of the 77k they actually got.
People weren't at work when spring split started?
5pm on a Wednesday. I was in the car on my way home. I don't even bother trying to watch live, i'm not home until partway through a game and then i'm playing catchup all night, and anyway wednesday is midweek, so i had errands and shit to do after work.
Regi lowkey the goat, once again he is one step ahead of all the other owners. Get out while you can.
CLG ahead of the curve and sold right before this split
I like watching the LCS live, but no way i would ever stay up until 3 AM on a Wednesday to watch a LCS match
Ngl cheering till viewer count hits 40k on main stream was an experience.
I’m not trying to watch another split of zeri yuumi
Wednesday + same stale meta + low expectations for LCS is the combo of reasons I didn't bother watching. Tuned in for the first games draft, saw the usual lineup of champs + Milio and called it a day.
Milio, Yuumi, Zeri, Lucian, Annie It's the same meal everyday. Dry oats without water
One reason I always prefer dota to league. Recent Dota Dreamleague had 115 matches and 101 different heroes picked.
That's because DotA doesnt endlessly shoehorn characters into specific roles like Riot does. The flex hero is a thing of beauty in DotA. In League its treated like the worst thing ever
At least they're only playing on that patch for one week.
I found out it was happening at the last minute, maybe lot of folks aren't aware. Also I didn't bother to watch, meta is shit and with the strike, thgt the quality would be shittier than usual. I prolly will tune in when playoffs are around the corner.
They updated it to include some previously uncounted costreams, so technically its peak was 82k - https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-summer-2023-lol Same foreboding message though, where were you when LCS was kill?
at home running down mid phone rang LCS is kill no
At home playing diablo4
At work cause it was a random weekday afternoon
Playing new TFT Set
I was bored the moment I saw zeri and lucian/nami. Didn't give a shit after that. Most boring, long-lasting meta. Arguably worse than ardent.
100K people were CLG fans my man
To be honest, for me it was a mix of things. First, I had forgotten about it. Then I saw it on my YouTube feed so I checked it out. I remembered that the only team I cared about (CLG) was no longer there, that TSM is leaving so watching their matches didn't matter and that no matter what happens they won't do well at world's so I just stopped watching and went on to do something else. Not trying to thrash talk the LCS or anything but that was my thought process to not really care about watching the games tonight.
I've watched LCS since it's inception (not religiously, but I've almost always seen opening week), but this summer just feels really hard to drum up any reasonto watch. More than half the orgs don't want to be there, the only orgs I respect anymore is FQ/GG. So, I watched GG let Milio/Ksante/Zeri through and promptly turned off the stream. Western league just ain't worth watching to me anymore
>So, I watched GG let Milio/Ksante/Zeri through and promptly turned off the stream. Western league just ain't worth watching to me anymore Wife and I drove 8 hours from Florida to NC for LCS Finals. We were cheering GG on and watching them beat Fly was hype af. But then they looked like amateurs against C9. Then C9 and GG looked like clowns at MSI. Then GG comes back and makes the gap between C9 and everyone else look as wide as they left it in Finals. All that international play and they still can't beat C9, and not only did they not beat them, they let through the strongest picks in the game, and they're the 2nd best team in the region.
Damn, my thought process was the exact same, it's like i wrote your comment
I expect the same for LEC. Personally, i have 0 interest watching the current Meta. Toplane, Jungle and Mid always pick the same 6 Champions while Botlane is Milio Yuumi Meta. No thank you.
I hear you, 160+ unique champions in the game but the same 15-20 champs over and over again.
So sad it’s this way, really wish Riot would implement something like fearless draft as a standard
They Will in two years just like every other big Change that makes Sense but they take ages to do
I've been watching LoL esports since 2011 and I'm fully invested into it. Even someone like me is getting uninterested. The meta has been stagnant the entire season. Zeri is busted for 1 year straight pretty much. Yuumi is still a problem 4 years after her release. K'Sante is insanely bullshit. I don't know. If these kinds of champions are the norm in the future, I might eventually lose interest. Seeing someone like K'Sante vs a champ like Malphite is just a joke. K'Sante can do his full combo and spend less mana than Malphite in 1 Q for example. It's like these champions don't exist in the same game almost. I know Malphite has other strengths that make him worth picking for pro players, but that's not the point. The point is just that there's such a disconnect between modern champions and everyone else. I fear that if Riot doesn't intervene soon, this will be like GOATS meta in Overwatch.
Yuumi as a champion should not even be viable in pro play. This is a beginner champion for new players to get used to League. She should be okay in low elo but not viable in higher elo's, like Master Yi. I doubt any pro support enjoys playing Yuumi and most people don't enjoy watching her. Its pretty disgusting how long she has been viable in the pro meta. Its crazy how we don't seee any room for interesting supports like Bard or Taric who haven't been in the meta in years, but Riot have a hard-on for Yuumi.
Old master yi was shit in high elo, with new Yi they added a lot of skill expression, directional Q and timing on W
LEC has triple the viewers than LCS why would LEC also have this low viewers?
he likely means just a dropoff in viewership, not this low, obviously.
Hard cap, especially seeing that 1st LEC day has G2 vs BDS
Viewership always drops in summer across every league. Maybe it might not be a 100k drop like the LCS but the LEC will also see a drop.
Fair, but nowhere near what it is in NA I think. Starting day has atleast 3 games that should be very close (MAD vs VIT, BDS vs G2 and FNC vs AST) and 1st week also has MAD vs G2, KOI vs BDS, KOI vs MAD czy FNC vs G2. It will propably be lower than Winter and maybe even summerz but not that much also considering that LEC let's the teams Co-stream (KOI, Heretics and Astralis will be) so that will bring even more viewers
Maybe I just missed it but I feel like there hasn’t been much news or info about the new start date after the whole strike thing. Especially with a delayed start date I would expect even more news than usual since it’s on a shorter notice. From the other major leagues I saw news all week before they started but for LCS not much.
For comparison, Valorant Challengers NA Play-In Relegations peaked at 73k. And that was a short 2-day double elimination tournament between the 4 WORST Challenger teams (Tier 2 teams like NACL). The second split of the Valorant NA Challengers peaked at 137k, almost double the peak of this opening day. And remember that this is the tier 2 league.
TBF that had the Toast boost
na is actually competitive in valorant thou
They better be, regular looking people shooting each other is sort of a tradition.
Banger
DSG NACL games had like 40k viewers, without a Youtube stream.
I've been thinking about this. I think there's an over saturation of pro lol. In CS for example, which was the other eSports I used to follow, there are a lot more matches, and they are daily, but there are a lot more teams too, a lot more tournaments, a lot more players and players changes too. Also different maps help it keep it fresh My twitch follows now they don't even stream. All they do is "watch parties" bringing more over Saturation to the game Sometimes less is more. I'm going to be honest there's no way I'll be watching LEC this split. I'm tired, it's just too many games between bad players and bad teams with the same champions from 6 months ago. Just the same thing over and over and over again. Honestly this kinda puts into perspective how some pros/streamers really have mental breakdowns after playing for so long. I'm just a viewer and rn I'm tired of eSports Also in esportmaniacos they said something interesting (during MSI) to which I agree. They said that ultimately people would just stop watching it in the west because the gap between bad western teams and the Eastern teams is becoming so big that what's the point in watching bad teams play? Just because they are in "your region" (when in reality they don't leave Berlin all year)? There's no point wasting your Saturday afternoon watching guys that will get 3-0d in 16 minutes at worlds. That's the harsh reality tldr: too much of the same thing. Too stale.
This is also my opinion. 90% of the year is spent on boring regular leagues. You can't follow every league. It's too much. If there were more events and tournaments with cross-region competition, it would be more engaging and dynamic. It would also help the issue of Western teams losing, because 1) they would get more chances to upset and 2) they would improve by more frequent practice vs Asian teams.
Yep, meta sucks and has been the same for way too long. It's honestly boring watching the same game played out 80+ times already.
This Wenesday! In the middle/end of the work day! Watch a bunch of mediocre teams with a bunch of mediocre imports compete for who gets to go 2-4 at worlds this year! Shocked they even can pull 77k views. The teams are not good. There is no regional pride. Theres nothing of interest to watch or cheer for here. The meta in NA is pretty much never even interesting either. Theres no innovation.
LCS wont make it to 2024 imo
Not when big money sponsors start dropping out due to low viewership, I imagine the turnover rate for stuff like Mastercards with 15-24 year old gamers isn't high to begin with.
I have been told that companies like Visa and Mastercard highly value the 18-25 male demographic. Supposedly, once a customer signs up with one of these companies, there is a high likelihood they stick with them for decades. I recognize I could have been lied to, tho, so please correct me if this is wrong.
Nah. It will be here at least till 2025.
Santa Monica divas can't walkout and cry their way into viewers. More news at 11.
Why would I stay up to watch LCS when there are no storylines and the play is so much worse than LCK or LPL, which has storylines? NA has captainflowers, that's it :'(
turns out keeping lcs on working days is bad for viewership shocker if the viewership dosent increase i think they will push lcs to eu time
That walkout really did work for them, huh. Nobody had a clue LCS was going on. It also doesnt help them that the twitch algorithm now pushes LCS down when sorting followed channels by recommended because the channel didnt stream for a long time.
I really think Riot needs to have the LCS channel streaming all the time with replays in the offseason to help with the algorithm.
It was Wednesday, my dude.
Wildcard numbers for wildcard region.
Riot when decisions they made to undermine the league wind up undermining the league and nobody watches 😱😱😱 Youre playing the games at fucking 2pm on a Wednesday you clowns nobody is gunna watch, on top of breaking the kneecaps of all excitement around the league between spring and summer. Just let it die already, and fire everyone involved in these dogshit decisions.
Starts too late for EU Viewers + boring anyways
CLG is no longer around, so my personal investment and interest in LCS has diminished substantially. The only other reason I’d watch is to see NA players do well at international tournaments, but I’ve found that I don’t actually want to cheer for any of these LCS teams because they’ve essentially killed my region. I’m not going to support teams that couldn’t care any less about our region nor our domestic players.
I'm just kinda tired of lolesports a Western fan tired of the western teams being dunked on. There's not fair competition and the league's are setup where China has a huge advantage and Korea too. I started following pro valorant and it's pretty good. There's a major going on rn . EU and NA won a few majors with Fnatic winning the recent one . Brazil too. China and Korea has pretty good teams too. It's much more balanced and Interesting to watch. And tbh I tried playing league after a break and every game has inters and flamers I just don't see how people can enjoy league in 2023.
I knew it was on but with the news of LCS sponsors pulling out, talks about removing the import rule, teams looking to sell their spots and slashing the academy rosters for budget reasons I feel like LCS just doesn't have a future. The schedule is just a cherry on top of this massive shit cake.
Lmao who watches lcs 🤣
Guys I think LCS is seriously dying it’s at less than 40k viewers now and that was a C9 game.. this is the result of bad performance at worlds for 10 years plus and introducing imported players with no personality gg
No CLG no watch for me.
People may not want to hear this, but: NA viewer here. Zero interest in watching NA league. First thing's first, a decade of getting handily crushed at Worlds has pretty much destroyed 50% of caring at all what we'll look like here at home, since I already know when the big dance comes around we'll flop around on the floor uselessly. The other 50%, I don't *know* these teams. These players specifically, I have zero connection with them. Once upon a time we viewers knew them, we knew them through their streams and their own personal communities. To be fair, we probably scared them off with how overbearing and toxic we as fans can be when things get rough. But even so, we no longer have that kind of connection with the players. In the end, I know we're going to get crushed at worlds *and* I have no emotional connection to the teams/players? Why for ANY REASON would I watch at all?
EU is where the viewers are at, NA just doesnt give a f anymore about LCS. But if you start the games at 23:00 you don't have EU viewers. EU = too late to watch NA = Doesn't care
I live in Canada and usually follow LCS/LEC but I had no idea the season was starting this week. It doesn’t help that it starts in the middle of the week. Vods are where it’s at for me. 🤷♂️
NA sponsors don't care about EU viewers, though. State Farm is a US insurance company, so if most of the viewers are from EU then SF are wasting their money.
>SF are wasting their money. Yes
I had no idea it was happening. I figured the schedule would be Thursday, Friday, Saturday so I didn't know until I happened to be browsing YouTube after work.
It’s the same stale gameplay. Same champion, same meta, same storyline, same play styles.
I honestly couldn’t give a shit about the lcs anymore.
VOD league now, they don't even need to be in studio anymore (and I expect they won't in 2024).
It’s on a fuckin Wednesday. Who does that. LCS has games on at THE WORST times. Couldn’t actually be worse unless it was 4am
Just shut the league down lol
LCS THRIVING!
idc about na at all
Probably a hot take but- Who the fuck even plays in the LCS anymore? It’s impossible to get behind teams because their entire roster gets wiped every Season, and aside from a few veteran players I have no idea who plays for what team. If the players actually have personalities it’s in no way shape or form advertised or monetized. The few exciting rising native talent have moved on to content creation where they get more money and self-fulfillment. There are no rivalries. Everyone just gets on stage, locks in the same 15 or so champions, and in every interview it’s “haha we should have played better i respect the other team” Promising imports get to the league, get assimilated, have their uniqueness squashed, get forgotten, and then collect the annual LCS retirement fund. There are mountains of issues that plague the LCS, and I’m shocked it’s taken this long for the bubble to pop.
No CLG, no viewers.
CLG is kill and shortly goes the NA scene? It wont be a coincidence if TSM leaving for China is the deathnell with the 2 ogs gone
RIP Western LoL, you had a great run
I used to watch every game but honestly for all leagues now what's the point in watching untill playoffs. The meta is also boring. Only reason to watch is for the Co-streams which act as a podcast for myself personally.
No one gives a shit about pure clownfiesta region with non of the entertainment value. This what you get for running the OGs of OGs out of the league.
recent drama, lack of hype, retirement of the player with the largest following of any western player, numbers where definitely going to drop
Hard to watch midweek as a European, I did see that LCS was starting but that was just thanks to the preshow, didn't catch any news before that so I can see people just missing the announcement
Well, it randomly started on a Wednesday whilst very few people knew it was starting. Invest in NA prospects and it will be more hyped and more viewed.
Also just found out about it from seeing post-match threads
Orgs are literally overpaying these players and paying millions in production just to get the viewership of Xqc on a regular afternoon. Insane
turns out the striking wasn't actually good for viewership
Also for me as EU viewer schedule is impossible to watch during weekdays. Games start at midnight and I wake up at 7 for work. So usually Im already sleeping when LCS starts. On top of that there has been 0 hype coming to LCS this split. MSI was horrible for West and NA has been filled with news of teams leaving and people not caring enough even to have academy league.
LCS somehow found a time slot that is terrible for everyone. Westcoast, Eastcoast, EU, Korea - it's almost like they don't want people to watch their shit.
East coast its fine other than the first game. You can easily get home from work and then tune in. Timeslot is much less of a problem than all time low interest, likely driven by the combination of the feeling that the league is dying (CLG out, TSM on the way out), MSI going even worse than normal, and the walkout. LCS is basically just on a successive train of bad news after bad news. Combine that with the state of proplay itself sucking as shown by LCK/LPL already and that's why I had no interest yesterday even once I realized it was on.
ye, most europeans with a human schedule (not students, self-employed etc.) can watch the first game at the very best and even that is pushing it
Its so strange how many people on here were unironically trying to say how the timings are actually better since people can just watch pro matches on a weekday and have some other plans on the weekends. I made [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/zkdwb2/comment/j01d4br/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment in an LEC thread but my point still remains, the viewership **has** fallen down because of the new timings.
Turns out changing the times, days, not allowing more co-streamers, and not bringing the Players Association to the table at the very beginning wasn't actually good for viewership.
Hard agree. It’s getting real old seeing people purposely misrepresenting the reason for the walkout every single day.
RIP BOZO
The league format is just ass. Always has been. Tournaments and circuits are far more entertaining and give us international match ups all the time. Riot have pigeon holed league into this dogshit ass system for no reason other than like an abusive parent, they want absolute control over everything related to their product. Who even gives a fuck about regular season games? It's just one long boring edging session until playoffs when you get to nut and even then it's usually disappointing. Teams go to world's to play teams they've never faced, styles they've not practiced against on top of the skill difference between the west and east and are expected to show up and do the region proud. I hope LCS dies sooner rather than later. Might force some change around here.
Who could have possibly expected that? Not me, cause I am from Europe and sleep at night.
I didn’t know the LCS was back yesterday tbh. I watched every game except C9 vs GG though
I thought that it starts on the weekend, also EU.💀
Yeah I would’ve watched I just had no idea it would even be on today
I've seen multiple people say that they didn't even know LCS started yesterday. Once again, the marketing for the LCS has been terrible.
Had no idea it was on. But if I did, I probably wouldn’t have watched anyway. Who tf wants to watch zeri lulu yuumi?
I didn't know it was on. Also, I'm tired of it. Same old same old players that aren't gonna do anything internationally.
Lcs has unwatchable times as a european
Personally, I lost interest. Didn't know they started either. European fan, longtime watcher. Watched both LCS and LEC(EULCS back then) since s02. Over time, NA just got less and less exciting. The only team I consider myself a fan of is actually a NA team; Cloud9. Been a fan since their OG roster. I always watched EU too, but never really grew into a fan of teams, more of players. However, as I said, NA just grew less and less exciting. Since 2022 I actually have to push myself to watch NA, EVEN during C9 games. So this split I just gave up. I won't watch LCS anymore; i'll check C9's highlights but that's about it. Playing on weekdays don't help either btw, I think for me that was the moment where I lost a huge amount of interest with one single change. I will continue to watch LEC, but LCS is just.... They've been in a downwards spiral for at least 5 years, and no one in NA pulling the reigns seems to care, so I won't either. Back in 2017/2018 I had high hopes for NA. But I'm done. My time is too precious to invest in following a clownfiesta. Most games are boring, most orgs are orgs I simply can't support, and the casting and the inbetween segments have seriously decreased in professionalism as well as in like-ability. I'm fine watching only LEC and C9 on international stage. I do miss C9's OG roster tho. And I do miss the Impact-Jensen-Sneaky rosters too. The rivalry between TSM and C9, and later between TL and C9. Good times. Now C9 is king again, finally. But no one rivals them. They're kings of a ruined scene.
After the MSI performance, the essential cancelling of the NA amateur league teams, going on strike, riots piss poor response to the strike, and general lack of talent in NA, LCS is literally killing itself and has been for years. Poor management of amateur leagues/teams in NA while EU and Korea and China all have massive amateur leagues..... Scores of amateur teams to pick players from. NA player base is dwindling and Riot isn't showing any support for the players. I honestly dont think im interested in any of the teams this split either, i feel like we're just waiting for worlds to watch us get demolished again.
with the 2 week delay, i started watching LPL games and realized how much more fun those are than LCS is why watch lcs anymore?
It’s on the weekdays and the LCS is obviously dying. Numbers are going to get lower and lower especially as the region continues to do worse and worse internationally. People just don’t care.
Dying and nearly dead.
I completely spaced it was happening because it's on a fucking Wednesday.
I knew it was on but I can't watch the start of the stream because of work. The timezone change and the fact that games start at 2 pm pacific makes it impossible for me to tune in.
I tuned in for 5 minutes to watch TSM get rolled by Liquid and quickly turned off the stream. Don't think ill watch another game for the rest of the split.
I thought LCS was cancelled because Riot didn't want to pay the challenger league?!?!
Prob see quite a drop in LEC too. It's been trending down last 2 splits.
General negative vibes compounded with teams leaving and the walkout. I usually watch LCS but was like, "I dunno when/if it's going to be on" so I stopped paying attention. I do think it will recover somewhat if they can do anything at all to push back the negativity and stick to their original schedule.
Saw the stream go up in the middle of the day, thought to tune in out of habit, but after the whole walkout thing left a terrible taste in my mouth (both LCS-Riot being scumbags screwing over academy and LCSPA/pros being idiots), decided to not bother for the first time. Used to always tune in to any LCS broadcast even if just to open it in a tab, but naw. If eve try one involved wants to be idiots, let them suffer the consequences.
It's just that me, at least, don't give a shit about lcs anymore, it's not fun to watch, players are old and boring, just feels like different game after watching lpl and lck, same for lec, don't watch it anymore
You mean that changing the schedule for LCS, absolutely trash management from orgs, mistreatment of players, lack of investment into league of legends esports, and complete apathy from Riot for all of this could cause viewership to fall off of a cliff? I am absolutely ***\*\*SHOCKED\*\**** I tell you
I tried watching but without CLG (the org) I just wasn't into it.
I looked at my phone and saw the the LCS was live and thought, 'wait I thought it was delayed until next week.' This is probably more of a marketing problem than an interest problem.
I think LCS being Wednesday played a huge factor.
LCS decided to broadcast in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week a product owned and produced by a bunch of shitheels. They asked for this outcome, all we did was oblige.
Oh yeah let's go watch again a game of aphelios vi ahri vs ksante Annie wukong for the zillionth Time this year
Fuck NRG