Yesterday, Riot Games announced two interesting numbers pertaining to the Season 3 World Championship Grand Final between SK Telecom T1 and Royal Club at the Staples Center on October 4th, 2013. According to Riot Games' own statistics, a total of 32 million unique viewers were registered and 8.5 million uniques was the peak viewing number during the match.
Little over a month ago, Riot Games promised the game of all games to determine the victor of the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship. The entire production of that evening's game between SK Telecom T1 and RoyaL Club was set up to create a full-blown grown-up eSports entertainment show. After yesterday's news, it seemed that Riot Games have succeeded in that assignment. Two interesting numbers have been released in an official news item, published by Dustin RedBeard Beck, stating that 32,000,000 unique viewers have tuned in to watch the Grand Final at one point of the broadcast and that the peak viewership reached 8,500,000 unique people.
Bird's view of the Staples Center during the Grand Final (c) Riot Games
These are staggering figures that put Riot's biggest eSports event at the top of the table of most viewed eSports tournaments to date. To most of us, the match was watched through either one of the official live streams on Azubu, Twitch or YouTube but in several Asian countries (such as China and South-Korea) it was also viewable on traditional tv channels. It seems especially that last medium created a huge influx of viewers for the match.
Yet, it seems several people are not yet sure how to interpret the figures. Known community figures such as Scott SirScoots Smith and John TotalBiscuit Bain remain very critical of the way these numbers have been presented, citing a general lack of "proof" that these numbers are indeed to be believed.
Not to be that guy, but do we have any documents to support these Riot numbers? Do such things exist?
— Scott Smith (@SirScoots) November 19, 2013
Leigh Deman Smith on the other hand remains adamant that the numbers have in fact been correctly interpreted and people are "sceptical and untrusting" too rashly. Whatever may be the consensus, the releasing of these statistics seems to have sparked a (small) debate between known representatives of the bigger eSports companies such as DreamHack, ESL and Riot Games on social media.
When something is hugely successful in eSports, those that try to promote it get sceptical and untrusting. Oh how I love this industry.
— Leigh Smith (@RiotDeman) November 19, 2013
Whilst we will try and upate you on the aftermath of this publication, it seems to be a fair conclusion that the Season 3 World Championship was an event worthy of remembrance within the eSports history and will claim its own rightful place given time and perhaps some clearer information on how the figures were collected.
Source
Riot Games Announcement
