2025 is so far the year of League of Legends in esports. Due to a rule change, Riot Games has shifted the balance of power in LoL. The world of esports suddenly revolves around a league that has never played even the smallest role in recent years: the NCL. But now the 3 biggest Twitch streamers for LoL are in the league, and one of them is German.
What is this league? The NCL is a regional league in Europe. Here, teams from Scandinavia and Great Britain play against each other, at least each team must have 2 members from these countries. However, there is no way to be promoted from this league to the professional league LEC. The LEC is a franchise league that requires a buy-in.
The NCL was insignificant for years: The most important leagues in Europe, which regularly compete for the European championship, were based in Spain and France. To a lesser extent also in Germany, after all the team of HandOfBlood became European champions.
But in 2025, everything is different: The 3 biggest Twitch streamers in the world for League of Legends either play in the league themselves or at least have a team there. This changes the balance of power.
The 3 biggest streamers for LoL play in a league – One of them is German
Who are the 3 top streamers playing there? The biggest streamer for LoL on Twitch is Caedrel. He is the founder and “coach” of the NCL team Los Ratones. They are the main attraction of the league and currently hold 4-0 in 1st place in their group. Caedrel was watched on Twitch for 6.6 million hours in the last 30 days, and his channel grew by another 26% at a high level. Overall on Twitch, he is number 5.
The second biggest streamer for LoL is the German NoWay. He is the midlaner for the team “NORD Esports.” They stand with 3-1 in 2nd place in their group, only against Los Ratones did they suffer a defeat. His channel grew by 20% in viewer hours last month.
The third biggest streamer for LoL is Thebausffs, the overly confident top laner from Los Ratones. His channel grew by an impressive 52%.
The hype around the league also benefits former elite player Rekkles, the number 8 for LoL on Twitch. The supporter of Los Ratones hadn’t streamed at all in the previous month and is now entering with 1.2 million viewer hours.
Synergy effects boost the growth of streamers for LoL on Twitch
How do streamers benefit from the league? For the streamers, the league is an endless source of content: They can stream every training, every practice match, and every point game.
During team meetings, they might close the curtains and shut down the stream, but much of what is otherwise kept under wraps happens in public.
When big streamers collaborate, valuable synergy effects arise that benefit all parties involved:
- Those who already have a large channel reach new viewers, who are fans of other streamers, and get
free content
that they don’t have to produce laboriously - Those who still have a small channel benefit even more because the fans of the other streamers can discover them
How enormous the draw such synergy effects develop could be observed in the past with group play in Fortnite, role play in GTA 5, the communicative Among Us, or recently in the WoW streamer guild OnlyFangs. All these opportunities led to tremendous viewer growth and suddenly provided some previously unknown players with a career.
LoL overtakes GTA 5 and Marvel Rivals to become number 1 on Twitch
Is this also good for LoL? LoL gained 22% in viewer hours last month and is currently the biggest game on Twitch, ahead of GTA 5, Marvel Rivals, and the currently also flourishing WoW.
Here, the NCL surely also plays a decisive role.
Germany as a model for the rule change, but not benefiting from it now
What is the reason for this? Riot Games has long wanted to push the regional leagues in LoL, but it went wrong:
- First, they entered into collaborations with large YouTubers in Spain (Ibai), Germany (HandOfBlood), and France (Kameto) to build their own teams in the regional leagues of their countries
- Then they focused more on co-streaming, allowing popular influencers to comment on the official broadcasts of the league games. In Germany, they put Tolkin in a prominent position.
But that apparently still wasn’t enough.
Esports at this level was not profitable for the teams. There were too few viewers and sponsors, and some people lost a lot of money here. A team from Berlin even spoke of a black hole that just swallows money.
Probably fueled by the extreme viewer numbers that the German streamer team NNO achieved in the year they were promoted to the first league, the rules were changed for 2025 so that streamers could broadcast their own games.
This led to a hype around the regional leagues, and large streamers and ex-pros formed teams together. The English-speaking NCL is the big beneficiary of this development.
The boom could have perhaps also happened to some extent in Germany, but the most important German streamers for LoL have had a falling out with the German league: It is getting ugly between the big streamers on Twitch and the league in the German LoL scene
