A worrying trend has started to take shape

The first week of the 2023 LCS Summer Split has finally here, but it took a little longer than everyone had hoped. Sadly, it appears that viewers are not turning in as much as they used to in previous seasons when the top 10 League of Legends teams have clashed to open the current season.

The LCS has just once in the past three days reached a six-figure viewership threshold. According to esports viewership aggregator Esports Charts, during Team Liquid's win over 100 Thieves on June 15, the broadcast attracted 106 thousand people over the course of 32 minutes. It makes sense that this matchup would gain a lot of traction with well-known pros like CoreJJ, Doublelift, Ssumday, and Summit on the stage, but it's surprising to see high-profile matches with teams like FlyQuest and Cloud9 fail to reach six figures given the overall firepower of their rosters, which includes other talented superstars.