Out of curiosity, as someone who watches a bit of all the leagues, why is there such a huge difference in interest between the LPL and the other leagues? They are either the first or second strongest league and have probably the fastest paced most aggressive play style which I would think attracts more viewers, yet every game thread for LCS/LEC/LCK gets almost 1000 comments while LPL game threads are literally like 50. At first I thought it might just be because of the time zone difference, but aren’t LCK games broadcasted at a similar time yet a ton of people watch those games?
Edit: Wanted to clarify that my question is targeted more at Western viewers. I understand that in terms of total views, LPL probably has the highest due to China having a much larger player base, but that those viewers don’t watch on Twitch and YouTube or comment on Reddit.
LCK and LPL play at basically the same time, people watch LCK over LPL either due to attachment to players, attachment to orgs or just because they’ve always watched it since back in the day.
LCK built a much larger following, thanks to their early domination and casting personalities. LPL twitch stream in the early days was very amateurish, they don’t really care to market for western audience…
Besides being played at almost the same time as LCK… they got a bit too many teams so it’s bit hard to track for anyone new coming in as well as that there’s only 1 match you play against each team in a B03 format
I am not a fan of that, but I still do watch majority of ~top 5-10 teams matches when able to
LPL is actually much more popular than all the others combined. Chinese fans just don’t use Reddit or Twitch/YouTube.
But even as western LPL fan I can say that watching LPL is exhausting. It’s like a full time job. So many games, so many players, so many changes.
Also while LCK had many personalities known in the west as part of the broadcast - Monte, DOA, Papa, LS - for years LPL broadcast has been more like fan led project. Only person people can mostly think of when you say LPL is Frosk which is exactly not the best advertisement. Despite LPL casters being absolutely amazing….
In the end a bit of blame is on Chinese teams too. For obvious reason they kinda don’t care about west at all - I don’t think a single LPL team is officially shipping their merchandise to west. But you have no problem getting T1 or GenG merch (and probably others I don’t know about)
Also I completely forgot about Ashley Kang. Her interviews always have eng subs which gives west fans actual possibility to watch the interviews. I don’t think there is anyone like that for LPL.
LPL is on at the same time as the LCK. If you watched LCK in the last 2-3 years, you’ll see many of the same faces and teams. If you watch LPL like… ever, it’s like a revolving doors of which players and teams are good. That, imo, is a bit of a downside. On top of that, there’s just too many teams and the casting is imo worse (although not horrible like it used to be).
Honestly the hardest thing for me as an American that only speaks English, the names of the players in LPL are much harder to differentiate apart than Korea, since LCK players chose single/double syllable English words.
For example, Faker, Summit, Closer, Huni, Showmaker, Rookie, Deft etc.
The LPL players I remember off the top of my head are XiaoWeiXiao and TheShy
It’s much easier for me to remember the English ones as I speak the language.
Obviously they want to have their names in their native language which is understandable and I’m not entitled to relate to their names, but I’m just saying, it’s easier for me to remember and relate.
I think I saw an article about LCK and that they do this on purpose too. Pretty insane
Depends on if you are talking about western interest or overal interest. Because overall the LPL has BY FAR the most fans and viewers. They have millions of viewers every game because China has so many people. We don’t see it because China doesn’t use Twitch or Youtube.
I think western interest in LPL is relatively low because the games are at the same time as LCK and LCK has historically been the best region with more popular players and it has a lot of long time fans, Korea is generally quite popular in the west and China on the other hand is relatively disconnected from the rest of the world.
However personally, if I have the time to watch it, prefer watching LPL because of their unique playstyle.
I always found it odd when Atlus and Papasmithy were in LPL, no one really paid any attention to them until they moved to Korea. I almost guarantee if Hysterics/Lyric/Dagda etc went to LCK, people would instantly like them more. LPL just has some sort of debuff aura for casters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For me, personally, the casters can be hard to follow. No disrespect to them, they are good enough and seem like nice people, but most of them have strong accents and/or speak in nasal voices and that is fine in person but is tiresome on broadcast and I tune them out.
At least to me, as a non-native speaker, that is one of the main issues. Just working on their broadcast voice (maybe it’s the audio mixing, even) would be a big help. LCK casters have great voices, for comparison.
The other reason is that it’s also hard to follow the amount of teams and players, but that is complicated to fix. There is only so much you can do with narrative building and hype and power rankings. For LCS, LEC and LCK I know players, owners, team stories, metas. For the LPL I don’t know stuff like this, like Rare Atom being Vici Gaming for example, and because I tune out the casters I don’t hear it if they mention it. It’s a bad feedback loop.
Secondly, LPL doesn’t have a figurehead. Because of their amazing depth of talent a team can go from bottom of the standings last split to top of the standings and make it to Worlds which brings us to the next issue. Too many different teams get sent to Worlds year by year from the LPL for the Western fans to care. EDG might not even make it to Worlds this year when they won it last year. LCK has T1, GenG, Damwon. 2/3 usually make it so its easy to follow these teams.
Thirdly, LCK interest is high because they have very strong player narratives: Faker [this ones a cheat], Showmaker, Canyon, Chovy, Ruler, Guma, Keria. Half these guys are considered the best in their roles in the world.
Fourth, LCK commentators and analysts are awesome: Monte, Doa, Papa, LS, Atlus, Chronicler, Valdus, Wolf are all very good at what they do. This combined with Caedrel and LS costreaming means you will have more exposure given to westerners in general. This is nothing against LPL commentators or analysts, just saying the LCK ones are very good.
In a more broad scope, Westerners are generally more attracted to Korea than China.
Korea is basically the Japan-adjacent. For example, if you asked Westerners if they’d rather visit Japan or China for free, ~90% of them would choose Japan.
This cultural influence and international reputation trickles down to many topics, including LoL esports.