In League of Legends, a wild year 2025 awaits us: Teams of streamers, former professionals, and content creators are now battling it out in the regional leagues. The German Twitch streamer Frederik “NoWay” Hinteregger (32) is also part of it, but his debut did not go so well. At least not in terms of gameplay; in terms of viewers, there were more than enough.
What a game it was! The previously insignificant regional league of the UK and Scandinavia, the NLC, has now started its winter season:
The probably most exciting team there, Los Ratones, played on one side. The team’s coach and founder is the world’s biggest LoL streamer, Caedrel. The team is filled with early top players like Rekkles and Nemesis.
On the other side was the team “NORD,” with the German streamer NoWay in the mid lane, who at 32 wants to prove himself and is playing competitively again after years as a streamer.
NoWay crushed in debut in the NCL
This is how the match went: The outstanding players were the 3 former elite players from Los Ratones: Nemesis in the mid lane on Galio, Crownie as ADC on Corki, and Rekkles in support. ADC Crownie played a flawless game with 12-0-5.
None of the three died once, only Baus died 6 times on the top lane. He is known for his risky play.
At NORD, NoWay turned out to be the weak point; he couldn’t secure a single kill on Viktor and died 3 times.
There was little for NoWay to gain. To be fair: His opponent Nemesis is 7 years younger, was an All-Pro in Europe in 2020, and is actually a player who should be competing in the LEC, not in a regional league:
How did NoWay perform? The 32-year-old appeared highly concentrated and tense. He remained consistently on his lane and held his own against Nemesis but couldn’t make any significant plays at the beginning of the game. It seemed like NoWay was constantly vibrating under the tension.
When NoWay was at level 9, the already strong ADC Corki took him out in a 1:1 when he checked in on the mid lane. NoWay seemed surprised by how much damage the ADC from Crownie was already dealing and couldn’t get to safety in time.
At that point, Team NORD, which was hyping itself, was still doing well in the match. But Corki’s kill on NoWay brought Los Ratones to a 5:5 tie. From that point on, a snowball effect occurred, and the match ended quickly in 26 minutes.
From that point on, Los Ratones secured 15 more kills, while NORD only got two more.
A massive surge in viewers for LoL
This was the real success: For months, Los Ratones has been hyped, celebrated, and built up as the next big thing in LoL. At the start of the league, the match had around 160,000 viewers just on English Twitch – across the channels of the players who play and stream simultaneously.
Additionally, the league itself and NoWay’s German colleague, Agurin, who streams in English, also broadcasted the match.
Not pictured is the German Twitch with NoWay himself, who also brought in another 25,000 viewers – although not nearly as much as the nearly 100,000 from Caedrel, but still a decent number.
If you add it all up, this seemingly insignificant regional league match had around 180,000 viewers on Twitch – that’s quite impressive. This aligns with the expectations that all parties involved have for this action. We’ll see if this interest in the NCL impacts the German Prime League. Here, NoWay had some issues with the league operators: In the German LoL scene, there’s a nasty conflict between the major Twitch streamers and the league.
