On Sunday, League of Legends esports social media blew up with a random stray YouTube video from the LCS’ FlyQuest, ranting about co-streaming, economics, then proceeding to promote their own creators.

The video, titled “The Hidden Cost of Co-Streaming in Esports,” kicked off a storm of discussion regarding the decline of the Western League of Legends and the consequences of it. Most esports fans agreed that FlyQuest’s new YouTube strategy is cringe, but it sparked a debate: some blame co-streaming for the main esports broadcast’s growth, while others say it’s the only reason it’s grown or stayed afloat.

The truth, as it often does in discussions like this, often lies in the middle. And that seems to be more the case with Caedrel taking his stream offline for the LEC series between Shifters and G2 Esports.

Caedrel goes offline mid-broadcast

Due to the constant heat (and being the feature image of FlyQuest’s video), Marc “Caedrel” Lamont commented in chat that the streaming atmosphere was negative, citing the phrases “poor,” “cancer,” and “rage baited” endlessly. Many on the PedroPeepos subreddit commented that the chat was particularly egregious today.

Caedrel in chat after ending stream
byu/Jaime060304 inPedroPeepos

And while Caedrel was caught in the crossfire, it does indicate an interesting take on the whole drama.

The viewership numbers tell a story

Since I’ve been taking notes on this topic, I wanted to check the view numbers.

Caedrel often had around 66% of the English broadcast viewership for LEC this weekend. When the G2 series versus Shifters started, Caedrel pulled 33,000 viewers while the official LEC English broadcasts sat at just 20K combined (9K on Twitch, 11K on YouTube). But when Caedrel’s stream went offline, the official broadcasts jumped to 44,000 combined (25K on Twitch, 19K on YouTube). Jankos’ stream also doubled from 2,000 to 4,000 viewers.

It’s worth noting this happened around 18:00 BST / 19:00 CEST, so the viewer rise could partly be down to Monday workers coming back home in time to catch the latter half of the series. This also only accounts for English audiences, ignoring the French and Spanish scenes. So, maybe some moved over to watch the LEC, while others will have inevitably bounced.

What it does indicate is that there’s some truth to the narratives knocking around. Some are LoL esports fans, while others are only there for personality-driven content. 

One of Riot’s own staffers put it into perspective rather well, talking about reaction content and its impact on co-streaming esports.

take all of this with a grain of salt❤️ (see disclosure at the end):

I personally think the expanding of co-streaming has only slowed the viewership decline we see in esports, not sped it up. In marketing we talk about the player (or viewer) types. Some of these viewer types…

— Mel Capperino-Garcia (@Riotswimbananas) April 18, 2026

Based on that, it means co-streaming is indeed slowing the bleeding of what appears to be low viewership in LoL esports’ Western leagues, keeping some invested in the regular split.

Western LoL interest is at an all-time low

It comes at a time when general interest in Western LoL is very low. The recent LEC initiative to have fans select a team and award points to the orgs they support reveals a lot. Most of the fans are supporting G2 around 40K, with KC around 22K. KOI floats third, with the rest of the teams around 2-3K fans if not lower. It shows that uptake in something as simple as selecting a team and playing the game is low, and extremely non-committal, too.

Then there’s also the drama Los Ratones showed. The numbers were very high for the regular season when LR was there, with Caedrel’s stream hitting as high as 100,000 viewers. It shows that popularity has dropped dramatically since new teams could enter the league, especially those with personalities.

And then there’s the news that Valorant is getting a similar esports scene that LoL knew once in 2012, and have wanted since franchising got locked in.

There’s also the caveat that recent regular splits leave audience figures much to be desired. There’s often a large spike around the playoffs, particularly as the weaker teams get weeded out. So we’ll see the true impact of viewership figures in a few weeks time.

Riot probably needs to act

There are a plethora of reasons why LoL esports is hemorrhaging at a strong pace. But co-streaming is clearly band-aiding the problem for now, stemming some of the bleeding like a botched tourniquet.

Hopefully, League Next has some powerful moves for the game itself, and then Riot can announce something on what it can do with its esports scene to make it more promising. The formatting, even with the much-requested BO3 format in EU, seemingly isn’t enough to retain and regrow interest in the scene, despite years of demand to keep EU competitive internationally. 

That might be a scheduling issue, though, with all the road shows making each week feel relatively poor till the major matchups later in the regular season. We’ve thankfully had the Vitality narrative to keep the earlier weeks much more interesting for those still invested in the league. Otherwise, we’d probably see much worse numbers as they are delivering on content right now and the entertainment factor.

It also comes after every week, there’s some doom. For the last few weeks, Riot had to discuss the potential of its becoming an online league. Last week, they turned off even more fan engagement thanks to fan messages, leading to a soft geopolitical crisis. Now, co-streamers, a new lifeblood, are under fire.

This matters because franchise slots cost between $10-30 million USD, depending on when and where teams bought in. Organizations made massive investments expecting long-term value, and right now, that value is evaporating. If Riot can’t stabilize viewership and create sustainable interest, those franchise slots become worthless, and the entire Western LoL esports ecosystem collapses with them.

But, there’s truth to that. Co-streaming brings audience figures to sell to sponsors. But it takes values out of the stream and adds them to platforms. Perhaps Riot needs to make some sort of co-streaming rules and broadcasting deals to make it fairer. 

There’s a whole economics, fan engagement, audience, and longevity discussion, and frankly, there’s way too much to talk about. Riot needs to have this internally and scout it out at any right, before any more damage can be done.