Thus, another MSI has passed and the champions are Royal Never Give Up. Not only is RNG the second team in the history of this tournament to successfully defend their MSI title (after SKT T1), but they have also risen to become the team with the most championships in the history of this tournament with three victories. This MSI was particularly special for all participating teams as well as the entire League of Legends community. In fact, RNG even had to use an old trophy to take a check-in picture after their victory.
However, this does not diminish the excitement of MSI 2022. Notably, according to statistics from Eschart, the MSI 2022 Finals reached an impressive 2,194,104 views. This is also the highest number, setting a record for an MSI Finals throughout the history of the tournament since MSI officially launched for the first time in the 2015 season. Moreover, this viewership figure does not include broadcasting platforms from China, where the viewership would undoubtedly be even more impressive. This final was also between the “pride of LPL” RNG and the team with one of the largest fan bases in the world – T1.
Additionally, with such massive viewership, the MSI 2022 Finals also ranked in the top 5 most viewed matches in League of Legends history. This match is in the fourth position. The top spot is held by the 2021 World Championship Finals (4,018,728 views), the 2019 World Championship Semifinals in second place with 3,985,787 views, and in third place is the 2020 World Championship Finals between Suning and DWG KIA with a total view count of 3,882,252.
It can be said that although this MSI had many issues, the efforts made by RNG to participate in Riot’s tournament contributed significantly to the enormous viewership of the Finals between RNG and T1. Clearly, throughout the tournament journey, apart from RNG, there was almost no other name that could pose a challenge to Faker and his team. Therefore, the MSI 2022 Finals might not have achieved such record-high viewership if T1’s opponent had been another name, like G2 or EG.
And now that MSI 2022 has achieved such high viewership, the League of Legends community will surely look forward even more to the remaining international tournament of the year – the 2022 World Championship. At that time, the potential to break records will be even greater, especially if the Finals once again feature a major clash between China and Korea as has been the case in the past two consecutive World Championships.