In League of Legends, the World Championship 2023 is currently underway: In Germany, the broadcasting rights are actually held by Summoner’s Inn, the channel of the Berlin eSports company Freaks4U Gaming. However, a Twitch streamer is outshining them in 2023. Notably, Tolkin worked for exactly the company he is now competing with for viewers until 2022.
How does it work with the LoL World Championships and Twitch? The World Championships are the highlight of a LoL year, and peak viewer numbers are to be expected here. However, you cannot just show the professional games on Twitch.
The LoL Worlds games are actually broadcast on the official Twitch channels to which Riot has granted the rights. This varies by country and language:
- In English, it’s Riot Games itself, in Japan, for example, Riot Games Japan, in France OTP, and in Spain LVP Spain (via lol.fandom)
- In Germany, it is Summoner’s Inn, the channel of Freaks4U, which organizes the German Regional League “Prime League” in cooperation with Riot Games.
- But in 2023, Twitch streamer Niklot “Tolkin” Stüber (25) has the opportunity, as the only official German co-streamer, to broadcast the LoL Worlds games.
Flagship of LoL eSports in Germany:
Tolkin has significantly more viewers than the official channel
What do the statistics show? The LoL Worlds have been running for 3 weeks now, since October 10, but we are only looking at the last 2 weeks, when the hot phase began:
- In the last 14 days, Tolkin has had a watch time of 909,151 hours with 126 broadcast hours on Twitch.
- Summoner’s Inn has only 524,238 hours with 107 broadcast hours.
Is it different elsewhere? It varies:
- In English-speaking Twitch, Riot Games itself is clearly in the lead: They have 3 times more viewers than the British co-streamer Caedrel.
- In Spain, however, co-streamer Ibai dominates the official channel by a wide margin – Ibai is extremely popular in Spain
- In France, the official channel otplol_ has twice as many viewers as Kamet0, one of the men behind KarmineCorp
Tolkin was previously a caster at Freaks4U
Why is that juicy? Tolkin was himself an eSport player in LoL and was considered one of the best German top laners, even if it never quite made it to the LEC.
After his active professional career in LoL, starting in 2020, he worked for Freaks4U as a caster for two years. Tolkin only resigned there in September 2022 because he could suddenly play for promotion to the 1st league with his hobby team NNO . That did not go well with working at the official Riot partner Freaks4U.
Employees of the company are reportedly reacting irritated to new co-streams
Could there be bad blood? Yes, there could be. These co-streams for LoL are now a rather new idea with which Riot Games apparently wants to find new viewers to counter the eSports crisis. However, this does not seem to please the official partners.
A friend and partner of Tolkin, the German Twitch streamer NoWay, said in a recent Twitch stream that employees of Summoner’s Inn have already reacted slightly irritated, when he and Tolkin were allowed to co-stream the LEC finals. Employees had posted some strange “xD” emotes on Twitter, which NoWay felt were “irritated reactions”.
He himself also does not know how Riot Games coordinated this with Freaks4U.
However, NoWay adds that companies like Freaks4U also benefit from streamers like Tolkin, because co-streamers may not promote their own sponsors in the streams, but instead support the main sponsors with their reach. Thus, companies can advertise with the additional reach.
Freaks4U loses 3 well-known casters
This is NoWay’s explanation: NoWay also expresses cautious criticism of Summoner’s Inn: He acknowledges that the employees work hard on the broadcast and are passionate about LoL, but perhaps the company has set its priorities incorrectly.
Freaks4U has invested a lot of money in technology and production in recent years, but in doing so has lost its established casters, who they have built up over the years, like Maxim, JustJohnny, and Tolkin.
As NoWay suggests, it might have helped to invest more money in the casters than in the technology to retain the audience favorites. However, he admits that influencers are indeed very expensive.
The casters have already taken salary cuts because they wanted to do something good for the German scene.
According to NoWay, it is difficult for companies like Freaks4U and official streams like Summoner’s Inn to retain viewers permanently. Twitch streamers have advantages here, for example, through a parasocial relationship that viewers build with streamers – but also through their personality. In Tolkin’s case, his expertise in what concerns LoL players from South Korea and Japan is an important factor.
He himself watches the LoL Worlds through various co-streaming channels in English and switches from streamer to streamer.
We at MeinMMO have requested a statement from Freaks4U and will add it as soon as it is available.
Freaks4U says: No bad blood, but the ecosystem must work for everyone
Update, November 2, 4:58 PM: We have received the statement from Freaks4U regarding NoWay’s statements. Our question to Freaks4U was, among other things, whether there could be “bad blood” between Freaks4U and co-streamers, as NoWay suggests:
From our side, there is absolutely no “bad blood” towards Tolkin. We appreciate him both as a person and for the added value he brings to the German League of Legends scene. Before he focused on influencer activities, he was part of our team, and there has always been a positive collaboration.
Nevertheless, the co-streams are of course in competition with our own broadcasts, where, alongside the general economic situation, we have many employees who have been pouring their heart and soul and all their time and effort into realizing a positive experience for the fans and see their passion project endangered by co-streaming. Nevertheless, there is no “bad blood” from our employees’ side either. The right approach for the future must be to find a middle ground together with co-streams and Riot, from which all can benefit and where good synergies can be established between the streams in good time. For the viewers, this provides a broader offering, which is initially good, but in the end, it must work for all involved in the ecosystem.
More about Tolkin:
