On July 2, the playoff stage of League of Legends’ premier offseason tournament kicked off and will continue over the next week and a half. During MSI 2025’s Upper Bracket Round 1, two matches were played, one of which set a new peak for the tournament’s live concurrent viewership.
MSI 2025’s playoff stage opened with a high-stakes matchup between Gen.G Esports and G2 Esports. Gen.G entered the match as the champions of the LCK 2025 Road to MSI and one of South Korea’s top teams in recent years. G2, on the other hand, had reached the finals of both LEC 2025 splits, solidifying their status as one of Europe’s strongest representatives. The match peaked at over 1.172 million concurrent viewers, setting a new tournament record: comfortably over 40,000 above the previous high to establish a new milestone for the event.
Gen.G closed out the series with a 3:1 win, sending G2 down to the lower bracket of the playoffs. A relatively viewer-friendly timeslot for Korean and European audiences (especially compared to the second match of the day) helped the series draw solid viewership.
The audience was notably higher than in the second match, where Anyone’s Legend, winners of the latest LPL split, faced FlyQuest, champions of the LTA North 2025 Split 2. That series also ended with the score of 3:1 (in favor of the Chinese side), but it peaked with 30% fewer viewers than the first match of the day.
As a result, the Upper Bracket semifinal will feature a Korea vs. China derby, while the Lower Bracket opens with a classic EU vs. NA showdown
MSI 2025 continues today, and there’s a strong chance we’ll see a new viewership peak. T1, the world’s most popular League of Legends team, enters the playoffs with a matchup against CTBC Flying Oyster from Taiwan. In the second match of the day, KOI will take on Bilibili Gaming.
Keep up with the tournament and live viewership updates on Esports Charts!
