This past weekend, the semifinal round of the League of Legends World Championship 2019 took place in two much-anticipated matchups between G2 Esports and SK Telecom T1 while FunPlus Phoenix took on Invictus Gaming. While both series’ ended up being fantastic in their own ways, Sunday’s showdown between SKT and G2 ended up being record-breaking.
During its peak on Sunday, the broadcast between G2 and SKT reached a concurrent viewership total of nearly 4 million people around the world, excluding China. According to Esports Charts, the exact total at which the broadcast topped out at was 3,985, 787 viewers.
To put this all in further context, this means that the semifinals matchup between SKT and G2 Esports was the most concurrently-watched esports event in history. This even blew away the previous record-holder, the Fortnite World Cup, which took place earlier this year and reached a concurrent total of 2.3 million viewers.
Most Popular esports events by Peak Viewers (excl. Chinese platforms):#Worlds2019 – 3.9M#FortniteWorldCup – 2.3M#Worlds2017 – 2.1M#Worlds2018 – 2M#ProAmFortnite – 1.9M#TI9 – 1.9M
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Overwatch League 2019 – 318kMore stats:https://t.co/k8Zyjsejy9
— Esports Charts (@EsportsCharts) November 3, 2019
Part of the reason as to why this matchup ended up reaching such a high viewership mark was because of the teams involved. G2 Esports and SK Telecom are historically two of the most beloved and well-known esports organizations in the League of Legends pro scene. To many, this showdown in semifinals was also between the two best active teams in the entire world and drew a lot of interest because of as much. League of Legends is also still the most popular video game in the entire world, so it’s always going to have a bit more exposure than other games would.
Worlds 2019 is set to wrap up this coming weekend on Sunday, November 10. The finals will see G2 squaring off against FunPlus Phoenix with the event set to begin at 6am EST/3am PST. We’ll have to wait and see if the conclusion of Worlds 2019 can end up reaching higher highs than semifinals did at that time.
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