Credit: lolesports/Riot Games
This year the League of Legends Championship Series 
started one week later than the LoL European Championship , putting the two leagues is distinctly unique positions after this past weekend of action.
While the LEC has propelled a Spring Split filled with year-over-year growth into yet another strong performance in terms of audience on Riot Games’ main Twitch channel, LCS viewership has stagnated.
Live coverage of the LEC on Twitch Friday and Saturday averaged 86.1K concurrent viewers, adding up to 1.15M hours watched for the weekend. Those viewership figures match the league’s continued trend of growth from last year. In 2018, the league averaged 59.4K CCV totaling 710.9K hours watched for the same week.
Because the LCS started one week later than the LEC this season, comparing 2018’s weekend that most closely matches this weekend on a calendar doesn’t give an accurate depiction of the league’s growth. This weekend LCS averaged 111.9K CCV for live coverage on Saturday and Sunday, with a total of 1.4M hours watched.
Week eight of the LCS last year was played March 10-11 averaging a nearly identical 111.9K CCV with a total of 1.3M hours watched for the weekend. To this point in the season, the LCS had followed a similar trajectory to the LEC in terms of consistent year-over-year growth on Twitch. This week is the first notable sign of stagnation by the league.
Overall, the Riot Games channel reached 2.7M hours watched for the full week of coverage including reruns with an average of 61K CCV peaking at 181K. In 2018, the channel produced 2.9M hours watched with an average of 47K CCV peaking at 193K, but the weekend was the end of the Spring Split for both the LCS and LEC. After the regular season schedule was over, there was additional coverage that pushed the Riot Games channel to generate more hours watched.
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.
Peak viewership of 181K CCV came during Team Liquid’s loss to FlyQuest . Team Liquid, one of the league’s more popular teams, has played matches during peak viewership on a regular basis to this point in the year. Peak LEC viewership came during Fnatic’s win against G2 Esports that helped the team propel itself to a 2-0 weekend and third place for the Spring Split regular season.
