Davide Xu is a freelance writer at Esports Insider focused on League of Legends esports. He covers everything inside and outside the Rift—especially when it comes to European and Asian competitive scenes. With a finance background and a multicultural lens, he loves talking about business as much as macro.
With the LEC coming to an end with the Grand Finals in Nice, LEC Commissioner Artem Bykov reflected on the 2026 season, discussing on the league’s viewership, its growing reliance on co-streaming and why the LEC Versus won’t return for 2027.
The 2026 season has arguably been one of the LEC’s most ambitious: Riot Games expanded the calendar, brought in Tier 2 teams with LEC Versus and six roadtrips, and changed the Summer Split format to accommodate last year’s feedback.
For the time being, however, not everything will come back next year: the Commissioner confirmed that the LEC Versus won’t return for 2027. The format had created a rare opportunity for Tier 2 teams to compete against the best teams in EMEA, but Riot is now planning to refocus on the LEC and its existing teams.
“LEC Versus was an experiment that showed what a Tier 1 and Tier 2 competition could look like. It paved the way for competitions such as the EWC qualifier,” said Bykov. “We want to let third-party tournament organisers explore the Tier 1 and Tier 2 space.”
In our chat, Bykov highlighted the expansion of live events as one of the year’s biggest successes, bringing the total number of roadtrips to six if we include the grand final in Nice.
The Summer Split format has also received positive feedback from teams, players and fans, according to Bykov. However, adding more events and broadcast days created its own problems, especially when it came to scheduling. Bykov acknowledged concerns raised during Spring over teams receiving imbalanced match schedules.
“That is one of the areas we want to improve next year,” he said. “We have already discussed it in detail with the pro teams, so we will work more closely with them when scheduling future road trips and splits.”
Viewership was another hot topic for this year. According to Esports Charts, the current summer split’s viewership has gone down by 23% compared to the 2025 edition, a worrying trend if we just look at the number alone.
Bykov, however, emphasized the importance of context when looking at viewership. He explained that the increase of show days, from 66 to 75 in 2026, meant that more matches were spread across the season.
“When you increase the number of matches throughout the year, the spikes matter less, and that affects average viewership,” Bykov explained. “We expected that.”
He also added that the LEC has already surpassed its previous record for hours watched, and at the time of the interview, the two most important matches (lower bracket final and grand final) were yet to take place.
While he’s positive on the trend, the LEC Commissioner confirmed Riot will conduct a deeper analysis once the season ends.
Remaining on the topic of viewership, Bykov also acknowledged the increasing dependence on co-streaming. Top creators like Marc “Caedrel” Lamont and Kamel “Kameto” Kebir drive a large chunk of the numbers for English and French-speaking audiences, with taking numbers away from the traditional broadcast.
Bykov acknowledged that dependence, but described co-streaming as a deliberate investment rather than something Riot currently intends to move away from.
“Co-streaming has been a big bet…