The Demacia Cup 2023, was held from December 25, 2023, to January 6, 2024, at the Shanghai League Arena in Shanghai. Bilibili Gaming ended up winning this A-tier tournament, which became the most successful one in the series.
For those unaware, the Demacia Cup is a Chinese tournament run by Tencent that acts as a post-season spectacle and involves 22 teams competing for the title, including 13 LPL, two LDL, one youth, and two streamers sides. The rules state that LPL and LDL organizations entering the Group Stage must field their first-team rosters, except for any new imports facing visa issues.
The first Demacia Cup was held in 2013, with EDward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up being the most successful sides with six and three titles, respectively. Meiko and Clearlove are the most decorated players, having clinched five crowns each, including four with each other as part of a dominant EDG crew.
The Demacia Cup 2023 saw Bilibili Gaming beat JD Gaming 3:0 in a Grand Final between the semifinalists from the recent League of Legends World Championship 2023 that broke esports records. The winner took home around $70.4K in prize money, which must have helped it soothe the disappointment of losing to Weibo Gaming at the last four stage of the world championship.
Most popular matches and important stats from the Demacia Cup 2023
This LoL tournament did 60.2K Peak Viewers during the Playoffs summit clash, which was a pretty one-sided affair. Intriguingly, with interest among fans cooled down in the off-season, this was the only match to even go past 30K PV across the event.
A couple of reasons for this increase in numbers this time around were the number of languages and platforms it was available in.
There were audiences from two more languages who showed interest in proceedings compared to 2022. Additionally, the number of streaming services broadcasting the action live also went up, with YouTube and Afreeca TV replacing Nimo TV.
Another significant reason was the number of channels streaming the matches live, with this count almost doubling year-on-year. One good example is Caedrel, who was able to raise his watch time by 117.5% despite streaming for less time. The presence of YouTube handles, too, helped elevate the reach of this event across the globe.
Two sides were by far the most followed based on average concurrent viewership at the Demacia Cup 2023, being the only duo to cross 20K AV. The support they generated undoubtedly played a part in this competition hitting 481.2K Hours Watched and 9.6K Average Viewers over 50 hours of airtime.
Most popular competitions in the Demacia Cup series so far
Among the six Demacia Cup events on record with Esports Charts, the 2023 edition turned out to be the best viewership-wise. It did 66.7% and 203.7% better in terms of watch time and concurrent viewership than the next-best ones, the Demacia Cup 2022 and Demacia Cup Winter 2018, respectively.
All viewership statistics listed in this article do not include data from Chinese live-streaming platforms. The publically available viewership information for these platforms needs to be more reliable and track the number of viewers. The absence of which makes comparisons to other live-streaming platforms impossible.
With Korean sides winning the last two world titles, China will want its League of Legends sides to pick up their game in the new season. It promises to be a riveting 2024, with changes revealed recently and the first splits of the year beginning soon.
