Last weekend, the League of Legends LCK League hosted the summer finals, and T1 and GEN, two veteran Korean teams, met again in the final. While many people wanted to see T1 complete the comeback from the losers' bracket and see Faker lift the trophy again, GEN's competitive form was better, and they beat T1 3-0 to achieve a third consecutive LCK title. It has to be said that GEN has completed the frontal suppression of T1 in the past year.
Although the series ended quickly and the GEN team members did not want to work overtime at all, according to the latest news from game statistics website Esports Charts, the 2023 LCK Summer Finals achieved a peak of 1.53 million viewers overseas. This number successfully broke the peak of 1.46 million viewers in this year's LCK Spring Tournament, becoming the highest-watched series in the history of the LCK League. It has to be said that Faker and T1 are the ratings guarantee of League of Legends.
A veteran who debuted for more than ten years and the best club in League of Legends history, Faker has a strong personal charm and is very popular in Korea and overseas. Coupled with a hand injury in this summer, he helped the team reach the LCK Finals after his return, and this legendary experience attracted many new and old audiences, and everyone wanted to see if T1 could create miracles. For Faker, he hasn't won a championship in a while, with the last title coming last spring.
It is worth mentioning that the current 5 highest-rated games of the LCK League are the last 5 LCK Finals, and it seems that the overall ratings of the LCK League are constantly improving and have achieved good results after the league. In these 5 games, there are T1 and Faker, but they have lost many of them. T1 has won quite a few semi-finalists and runners-up in the last three years, and they are always one step away from the trophy, and several young players will not be able to hold on to the final.
After all the matches of the LCK Summer Tournament have been played, we can also count the viewership of this year's LCK Summer Tournament, and the 5 games with the highest audience peak are all T1 participation. Except for the LCK Summer Finals, the other 4 matches were LCK Summer Playoffs, T1 vs. KT, DK and GEN. The final of the defeated group of T1 vs KT actually had a peak audience of 1.4 million, which almost exceeded the number of online numbers in this year's LCK Spring Finals.
It can only be said that Faker is the traffic guarantee of League of Legends, and his influence has been full in the e-sports circle, whether it is a loss or a win, there are a large number of players paying attention. Although T1 lost the LCK Summer Finals, many overseas fans expressed satisfaction with the result, after all, T1 is only the fifth place in the regular season, Faker has only returned to the starting lineup for three weeks, the whole team is not in good shape this season, and they do not expect to win the championship, beating KT to get the second seed has already earned.