Last Sunday saw the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) bring to an end the spring season with a Spanish winner: MAD Lions ran out champions beating Team BDS (2-3) in the final, after a spectacular comeback and were crowned champions of Europe’s most important League of Legends competition.
Headed up by the Spaniard Javier “Elyoya” Prades, MAD Lions took home their third continental title beating Team BDS with an heroic comeback win from 2-0 down. The Lions fought back after a steamroller start from their rival who had topped the standings after the regular season as well as the group phase and had reached the final as the odds-on favourite. The Spanish team, which was close to being knocked out several times over the course of the season, found their form in the fourth map of the final crushing their rival and rounding the match off with an historic reverse sweep in the fifth and final map which they won without giving up a single kill.
The broadcast of the final of the LEC spring season on the LVP Twitch channel (GRUP MEDIAPRO) notched up 208,707 viewers, compared to the 200,562 viewers for last year’s final in the spring as well as posting 263,893 watched hours, a 17% jump on 2022. In addition, the average watch-time per viewer went up to 75 minutes, 8 minutes more than last year. The peak of simultaneous viewers was 78,763 a little lower than last year’s 86,180.
With this win, the Lions have locked down one of the six spots at the LEC Season Finals, alongside G2 (the winter season champions), and direct qualification for the final phase of the MSI 2023.
May 2nd: the MSI, in Spanish on the LVP channel
The Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), the international competition which is played halfway through the season and brings together the best League of Legends teams from around the world, kicks off on May 2nd and can be seen entirely on the LVP Twitch channel. MAD Lions and G2 will be the European representatives at the tournament in which the Chinese champions, Royal Never Give Up, hasn’t qualified for and won’t be able to defend the title won in 2022. The entire competition is set to be played live in the UK.
