We talk about viewership a lot in esports because it’s one of the many ways we can gauge an event or esports’s popularity, and it’s safe to say the 2024 Mid-Season Invitational this year was a real banger.
In 2023, MSI only saw an average of 802,561 viewers across the mid-year League of Legends tournament. In contrast, MSI 2024 averaged 1,013,790 viewers, which is an incredible improvement for the Riot Games series and a testament to how successful the MSI format changes—best-of-threes into best-of-fives—have been. It was so good that viewership hit an all-time high, with over 2.8 million fans tuning in at its peak.
While MSI 2024 as a whole saw amazing highs, the number of fans watching the nail-biting and sweaty grand-final match between the LPL’s Bilibili Gaming and the LCK’s Gen.G peaked at 2,616,116 viewers, according to broadcast and streaming analytics company Esports Charts. However, it was the semi-final match between T1 and BLG on May 18 that broke MSI viewership records, with over 2.8 million people watching the incredible clash.
It’s an impressive haul considering 2023’s MSI grand final between JD Gaming and BLG only peaked at 1.1 million viewers; a little more than the average number of fans watching the entire MSI this year. It’s unclear whether this all-time viewership low was due to the grand final being between two LPL teams (so there was a lack of regional rivalry) or if it was because of the stale champion meta. Thankfully, MSI this year vastly improved.
Not only did we see a better format with best-of-threes for the play-ins and best-of-fives for the main event bracket, semifinals, and grand final games, but for the semifinals and final, League fans were treated to the ever-respent rivalry between the LPL and LCK as the two heavyweight regions battled for international supremacy in a very diverse metagame.
While K’Sante was, once again, a top pick, much like at 2023’s MSI, we didn’t see the same Aphelios vs. Jinx AD carry combo in the bot lane or thankfully the Nautilus mid lane. Instead, this year’s MSI featured destructive Kalistas, which Gen.G’s Peyz piloted during the second game of the grand final to get 28 kills and a Pentakill, Ornn supports from T1’s Keria and BLG’s ON, a regrettable Zac mid by Faker in the semi-finals, and a shockingly deadly Karthus jungle by Gen.G’s Canyon in the first game of the finals.
The final may not have broken all-time viewership like the semifinal between T1 and BLG, but it was an intense and exhilarating whirlwind. Now all eyes turn to the 2024 League World Championship to keep up the hype.
