Riot release viewing numbers for League of Legends Season 2 championship, the most-watched eSports event in history

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Riot have released the numbers for the Season 2 World Championship in Los Angeles weekend before last. While we knew it was a big event, the final numbers reveal just how huge a moment the Season 2 finals were for eSports.

In addition to the more than 8,000 people who crowded into the Galen Center (its 10,000 seat capacity reduced due to the staging requirements for the championship), online stream viewership peaked at over 1,154,000 concurrent viewers during the World Finals. 2.4 million people watched live on television in Korea and China, and 8,282,000 unique viewers tuned in during the finals.

It smashes the short-lived record held by Valve’s Dota 2 International, which boasted over half a million concurrent stream viewers, and continues a trend of significant audience growth that led organizations like MLG and DreamHack to post their own records earlier this year. Still, with an audience of over eight million, Riot’s World Finals are in a class of their own.