League of Legends ‘the most watched Twitch game in 2019’

League of Legends is reportedly the most watched game on Twitch in the first half of 2019.

The Riot Games title racked up 512.3 million viewing hours on the streaming platform between January and June, putting it on course to break one billion hours in 2019 — a feat only previously achieved by Fortnite in 2018.

Epic‘s game was the second most viewed game on Twitch in the first half of 2019 with 465 million hours watched, ahead of Grand Theft Auto V (269.1 million hours), Dota 2 (237.1 million hours) and Apex Legends (181.4. million hours), according to data compiled by The Esports Observer.

The site points out: “While Fortnite viewership fluctuated as influencers hopped to trending titles like GTAV or Apex Legends, LoL has managed to maintain a more consistently strong base of viewers due in part to its position as the most established spectator esport.”

Electronic Arts shares fell last week following the release of Apex Legends season 2, titled Battle Charge, on July 2.

Twitch Tracker data today shows the battle royale game has attracted an average of about 39,000 daily Twitch viewers in July, up from 16,000 in June but down from a peak of 218,000 during the game’s launch month in February.

The title released with a streamer-led marketing campaign, with EA reported to have paid Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins $1 million to stream the game to over 13 million Twitch followers.

Weekly Apex Legends Twitch viewership hours peaked at 40 million shortly after release – a record high for the streaming platform – and helped the game build a massive, even problematically large player base in a short space of time.