NLC, the League of Legends tournament for the UK and Nordic countries, is still dominating viewership.
The NLC was the most popular EMEA Regional League (ERL), with around 3 million hours watched according to Esports Charts.
There is a clear top two with France’s LFL following close behind on 2.73m hours watched.
This won’t come as a surprise to most, considering those two leagues’ popular teams and co-streamers.
The NLC has seen a huge surge in viewership, largely thanks to Los Ratones, created by UK streaming superstar Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont.
The team has a huge following with popular pros like Martin ‘Rekkles’ Larsson, Tim ‘Nemesis’ Lipovšek and Juš “Crownie” Marušič.
It’s no surprise that the stacked roster of Los Ratones became back-to-back NLC champions at Leagues Disrupt last week.
The LFL has long had a large and passionate fan base, epitomised by Karmine Corp created by streamer Kamel “Kameto” Kebir.
From this recent report, the surprise is the growth of Turkey’s TCL, which is now the third-most watched.
The Turkish league recorded 1.36m hours watched this Spring, which is a major increase from its 496k hours watched in Summer 2024.
This is largely thanks to a move from Twitch to Kick by popular streamers and casters Ferit ‘’wtcn’’ Karakaya and Ahmet ‘’Jahrein’’ Sonuç.
The TCL even remarkably beat the LFL in peak viewership with over 95k viewers compared to LFL’s 88k.
However, neither were remotely close to the NLC, which attracted a peak audience of over 223k.
And yet, these numbers aren’t even close to what the league drew in last split.
Los Ratones’ first title win, NLC Winter, was watched by an audience of over 360k in March.
The Tier 2 tournament was watched by a bigger audience than North America and China’s primary leagues, the LTA and LPL.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
