As we reach the halfway point of Q1 for 2024, esports disciplines of all kinds are slowly starting their esports seasons. Some sections of the esports industry have started 2024 strongly; IEM Katowice 2024 showed strong dynamics compared to the previous year’s event for Counter-Strike, and some of the regional League of Legends splits are exhibiting promising viewership compared to the previous year.
It is important to note, that some esports disciplines such as Valorant and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang have not had their 2024 esports circuits fully begin just yet. These games were unable to gather enough viewership to compete with other disciplines as their major events have not yet begun, but will likely appear later in the year as their year of esports events kicks off.
As a brand new year of esports takes off, Streams Charts takes a look at the top-performing esports organization channels on all live streaming platforms we track. A diverse range of esports disciplines feature in these statistics and many channels moved up in the rankings compared to the previous year.
Most Watched Esports Channels of Early 2024
At the top of our ranking is the official LCK YouTube Gaming channel, which covers the competitive Korean regional league in League of Legends. The Korean section of League of Legends has enjoyed an immensely successful start to 2024, more than doubling its average viewership on the official YouTube Gaming broadcast compared to the previous year.
The derby match between the title’s titans T1 and Gen.G was responsible for setting a new viewership record for the Group Stage of a regional league within the game, and the Korean League of Legends scene continues to grow. The YouTube Gaming channel for the LCK recorded 8.1M Hours Watched, and the Vietnamese YouTube Gaming and English Twitch channel generated another 3.51M and 3.22M HW for the region, respectively.
The European side of League of Legends is also represented here, by the French otplol_ broadcasting team and the official Twitch and YouTube Gaming LEC channels. Although these channels received significant viewership, none of them recorded higher average viewership compared to the same period of 2023.
Moving on from League of Legends, Counter-Strike was represented by three channels here, and Dota 2 by one. ESLCS, ESL Counter-Strike, and BLASTPremier all covered Counter-Strike esports events, such as IEM Katowice, BLAST Premier Spring Groups, and qualifiers for various events. Although none of these channels increased their viewership compared to 2023, this was partially due to the growth of community casters in the scene.
The recent IEM Katowice 2024 event generated more than half of its total watch time thanks to community casters, and this comes even after ESL made many non-English-speaking broadcasting teams “official partners”, whereas previously they would have been considered community casters. This was a contributing factor in the 2024 iteration’s high viewership, although it did have a knock-on effect: diluting the viewership for the official ESL-branded broadcasting channels.
Betboom_ru was the sole representative of Dota 2 for early 2024, garnering 3.07M Hours Watched in total. This was generated through the channel’s coverage of its own BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2024 event, for which the Russian-language channel covered both the main event and the various regional qualifiers held for the tournament. Although only three esports disciplines were represented in the above data, by filtering our statistics by platform, we can widen our view and explore more disciplines.
Top Esports Organization Twitch Channels
Looking towards the top Twitch channels of the year’s beginning, the easportsfc moved up into 7th place thanks to its coverage of the FC Pro 2024 Open event, which began in late November and recently came to a close in early February. The football esports title is making big strides to revamp its competitive esports ecosystem along with the new rebranding away from the FIFA license, and viewership is promising for the beginning of the year.
The English-language betboom_eng Twitch channel ranked just behind the efootball channel, recording 2.35M Hours Watched for the first month and a half of 2024. It was flanked by two of its MOBA rivals, the North American LCS channel and the Spanish LVPes channel. Although these channels received enough attention to be two of the top Twitch channels so far, both of them experienced a significant drop in viewership.
Although viewership was down for these regional MOBA coverage channels, there was a silver lining. Compared to past years, viewership for the LCS was much more stable in terms of week-on-week viewership. Previously, viewership would reach extreme heights in the first week or two, before dropping significantly in the middle of the season, and then rising again for playoffs. The current LCS 2024 split has exhibited a 10.7% variance in average viewership across the first four weeks, whereas the Spring Split in 2023 recorded a 30% variance across the first four weeks.
Top Esports Organization YouTube Channels
Looking towards YouTube Live, the dominance of League of Legends continues. Nevertheless, some new esports disciplines appeared in this data, which did not appear in the same period’s top 10 for 2023.
The Call of Duty League YouTube Gaming channel recorded 2.35M Hours Watched, enough to rank ahead of even the English-language LCK Global broadcasting channel. In 2023, the CDL was streamed on both YouTube Live and Twitch, which saw a significant rise in viewership for the discipline. For 2024, the organisers have decided to return to YouTube Live exclusively, which has already appeared to have harmed the league’s viewership. Despite this, the CDL’s official YouTube Live coverage made it the third-most-watched esports discipline on YouTube Live for the start of the year.
Ruthless HYPE Esports generated 1.78M Hours Watched on YouTube thanks to their PUBG Mobile coverage. This means the PUBG Mobile version is the most-watched mobile gaming esports discipline of 2024 so far, although the usual dominant force of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is absent from competition, as only minor third-party events have taken place so far in 2024.
Following the mobile gaming train, the Garena RoV Thailand generated 1.35M HW so far in 2024, managing to secure the final spot in this ranking. The Thai channel deals with Arena of Valor events, an international adaptation of Honor of Kings, one of China’s most popular esports titles. Honor of Kings is launching an international version for fans from around the globe to enjoy in 2024, so Arena of Valor may slowly become defunct. Track Arena of Valor’s viewership statistics across the world’s leading live streaming platforms to track its growth or decline, throughout the remainder of 2024.
