It can be said that no season has challenged the LCK as much as this one, especially after Gen.G’s recent major “self-destruct” at the end of 2023. Accordingly, right in the opening match of the LCK Spring 2024, T1 became the first “victim” of Gen.G when the match between this team and the reigning LCK champion was not broadcast on any channel of the Bilibili platform. However, Gen.G’s situation inadvertently brought about some significant changes.
According to the records from Esports Chart, the match between Gen.G and T1 hit more than 1.1 million peak views. For those who may not know, this figure is only about 300k views less than the final of LCK Spring 2023 between the same two teams. Furthermore, this number also surpassed the second-highest view count during the Spring 2023 tournament when the match between T1 and KT only reached about 1 million views.
According to many opinions, this is largely due to LPL having “put a ban” on Gen.G, forcing viewers in this region who wanted to watch the T1 match to find flexible ways, such as using VPNs or “fake locations” to watch on other platforms. In reality, this could be because LPL viewers wanted to follow T1 rather than watch Gen.G play. After all, T1 is the reigning champion of the 2023 World Championship, and during that journey, T1 defeated all four representatives from LPL. Moreover, all four of these teams could only manage to secure just one game win against Faker and his teammates.
