36 million view eSports championship

In yet another indication of the phenomenal popularity of eSports, the League of Legends grand final between the Koo Tigers and SK Telecom teams this week attracted an audience of 36 million unique viewers.

The publication Riot reported on the viewer figures from this year’s finals, a five week-long event that spanned multiple countries. Because of the extended length, the total hours viewed nearly doubled from last year, up from 194 million hours to 360 million hours.

“Total cumulative daily unique impressions (the amount of unique viewers that tuned in every day via online and television channels) reached 334 million over the four weeks (from 288 million in 2014),” Riot notes.

The average concurrent users – the number of individuals watching at any one time – for the five weeks was 4.2 million, while the highest peak concurrents for the grand finals was 14 million.

By way of comparison, Riot notes that the most watched television show in Australia since 2001 was 6 million, followed by the 4.04 million in 2005 who tuned in to watch Lleyton Hewitt in the Australian Open grand final.

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