First Stand 2025: Spectator enthusiasm falls short of expectations

The first League of Legends First Stand 2025 event has ended, and according to analysis, the results in terms of audience engagement and viewing time were not as good as expected.

Hanwha Life Esports successfully won its first international championship trophy in this competition, creating a glorious moment. However, the audience data of the event was lower than expected, exposing the problem of declining popularity of e-sports viewing.

Although the peak number of viewers for the finals reached 1.1 million, the overall data still failed to meet expectations. The cumulative viewing time of the event was only 18 million hours, but the pre-match forecast was 40 million hours. The gap of more than half surprised fans and industry insiders.

There are several factors that contributed to the poor viewing figures for First Stand 2025. First, the event was held in South Korea, and Western audiences of League of Legends may have had to watch the games at inconvenient times. Many viewers were forced to watch the live broadcasts in the early morning or late at night, which may have significantly limited participation.

In addition, the absence of popular teams, such as T1 and LOUD, led to insufficient representation of some regions, especially the Portuguese-speaking audience. Although Riot Game tried to stimulate regional competition through First Stand 2025, the impact was far less than that of the Mid-Season Invitational and the World Finals.

Even the championship-winning team, Hanwha Life Esports, saw a 2% drop in average viewers compared to their viewers during the 2025 LCK Cup. This may be because Hanwha Life Esports' previous high popularity was largely due to T1's participation in the competition.

In First Stand 2025, Kacrmine Corp, which made it to the finals, had the best average viewership, up 31%. This is largely due to the team's famous players, which attracted viewers to watch the event. This is just like T1's legendary player Faker, who is still one of the main factors driving the audience's enthusiasm.

In general, the reasons why the number of viewers of First Stand 2025 was lower than expected include time and region issues, the lack of popular teams, and the fact that the event's influence has not yet been fully established. However, First Stand still laid the foundation for the diversification of the future "League of Legends" event system, and is expected to be optimized in the future to further enhance audience participation and event popularity.