Forget about the Super Bowl (as exciting as it was).
Twitch announced today that Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, a member of the professional League of Legends team SKT T1, broke a record on the livestreaming site today for an individual streamer by attracting 245,100 concurrent viewers to his channel. This was also his first broadcast ever on Twitch, which has over 100 million users a month.
Faker is one of the most popular players for one of the world’s most popular games, which explains why his arrival on Twitch attracted so many viewers. The Korean player has won the League of Legends World Championship three times and has earned over $896,596 in prize money. He previously broadcasted on Twitch competitor Abuzu. The entire SKT T1 will now use Twitch as their official streaming site.
“We’ve believe Twitch to be the ideal platform to best showcase our T1 player’s skills,” SKT sports division director Sun Jung Kim noted in a statement translated from Korean sent to GamesBeat from Twitch. “We wish everyone to enjoy T1 player’s gameplay on Twitch, a global platform with numerous global LoL fans.”
This is a big win for Twitch. Faker and his teammates will bring their large fanbases with them to Twitch, which can help the streaming site grow.