Positive Conversation Enriches the LCS Championship Weekend
This past Sunday, the 6th of September was the final round of the League of Legends LCS Summer Split Playoffs in which one of the most popular eSports teams of all time, Team SoloMid, won the championship. This year’s Summer final series saw an increase of over 60k peak viewers to last year, even with a nearly hour-long delay due to a power outage of one of the players who was forced to play from home due to social distancing measures.
This series saw historic powerhouse Team SoloMid(TSM) face off against Spring runner-up FlyQuest in an exciting series that had viewers on the edge of their seats. TSM started the night off with a quick victory followed by another victory after the aforementioned hour-long pause. However, after that, FlyQuest came back to win two more games reminiscent of the 2019 Spring championship in which TSM blew a 2-0 series lead to getting reverse swept by rival Team Liquid. TSM, however, was able to dominate in the final game to win the series and the coveted championship, their seventh in their esteemed history.
I took to Social Studio to look at some of the online chatter around the series, as well as around the individual teams. I broke the Topic Profile into three separate keyword groups, all with the same base keywords (LCS and Summer) but with different “must” combinations, one with the posts including TSM (the abbreviation being most commonly used for the team), FlyQuest, and LCS in general. From there, I looked at the entire weekend to see what the chatter looked like.
In total, on Twitter, there were almost 40k posts from Friday the 4th through Monday the 7th, no small impact at all. Most of the Tweets were concerning LCS in general, with 65.1% of the chatter, TSM’s conversation came in at 28.7%, and the defeated FlyQuest chatter came in at only 6.2%. This is not too surprising since TSM is one of, if not the most established North American eSports teams around. In contrast, FlyQuest has only recently started gaining traction and a devoted following.
Across all keyword groups, age demographics show that Twitter users aged 21-34 were by far the most active, keeping in line with most expectations. Men also dominated the conversation with almost 3x the share of voice as women. Finally, in terms of demographics, the United States and Canada lead the way in the share of voice, unsurprising since this was the North American Championship.
Looking at the overall top words, sponsors Honda and Mastercard got their money’s worth to dominate the conversation with both appearing as significant words. Rapper turned video game streamer Logic was also trending with his opening ceremony performance (sponsored by Mastercard). A few more top word standouts involve companion leagues in Korea (LCK) and Europe (LEC) as well as the announcement that Team Liquid Support player CoreJJ won the Summer MVP award (Sponsored by Honda).
Examining the sentiment trends for each keyword group, we see that overall, the conversation was incredibly positive, with scores ranging from FlyQuest’s 72.8% to TSM’s 81.1% positive sentiment. Most of the negative sentiment all around stems from the short delay and reactions from heartbroken FlyQuest fans, especially during the final match of the night. Overall, this positive Sentiment is exciting to see, especially in such a competitive environment.
The top words for TSM and FlyQuest also show some minor differences. FlyQuest ended up not being the most talked about opponent in TSM Twitter this weekend; that honor instead goes to the dominant Team Liquid, who missed the LCS Finals for the first time since Summer 2017. The conversation about Team Liquid’s loss was outstanding. It was further boosted by a celebratory post by the LCS official Twitter account congratulating them on still making it to the League of Legends World Championships. The rest of the TSM top words revolve around the celebration of their first victory since Summer 2017, including a funny find of “choo” as people hopped on board the TSM hype train (choo choo).
FlyQuest’s Top words were mostly about their loss, especially a clutch Triple Kill by TSM mid-laner Bjergsen to launch TSM into a dominant late game, and another Triple Kill by TSM bot laner Doublelife to seal the victory. The conversation was not all bad, though; FlyQuest fans celebrated their team making it to Worlds this year, as well as coming within a game of the championship.
Overall, the conversation this weekend was one of excitement and celebration as people enjoyed a much-needed diversion from the ongoing pandemic, heatwave, and wildfires. Later this month, I will take a look at the League of Legends World Championship conversation, and hopefully can report on the celebration from one of our North American teams.