2025 has so far been the year of League of Legends in e-sports. With a rule change, Riot Games has shifted the balance of power in LoL. The world of e-sports suddenly revolves around a league that has never played even the smallest role in recent years: the NCL. But now the 3 biggest LoL Twitch streamers are in the league, and one of them is German.
What kind of league is this? The NCL is a regional league in Europe. Teams from Scandinavia and Great Britain play against each other here, each team must have at least 2 members from these countries. However, there is no possibility of promotion from this league to the LEC professional league. The LEC is a franchise league that you have to buy into.
The NCL was of little importance for years: the most important leagues in Europe, which also regularly play for the European championship, were based in Spain and France. To a lesser extent also in Germany, after all the HandOfBlood team became European champions.
But in 2025 everything will be different: The 3 biggest Twitch streamers in the world for League of Legends play in the league themselves or at least have a team there. This changes the balance of power.
Former German LoL professional is now one of the most successful Twitch streamers – that’s NoWay
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The 3 biggest LoL streamers play in the same league – one of them is German
Who are the 3 top streamers playing there? The biggest LoL streamer on Twitch is Caedrel. He is the founder and “coach” of the NCL team Los Ratones. They are the big draw in the league and are currently 4-0 in first place in their group. Caedrel was seen on Twitch for 6.6 million hours in the last 30 days, and his channel grew by another 26% at a high level. Across all of Twitch, he’s No. 5.
The second largest LoL streamer is the German NoWay. He is a mid laner for the “NORD Esports” team. They are 3-1 in second place in their group, only suffering a defeat against Los Ratones. His channel grew 20% in viewership hours last month.
The third biggest streamer on LoL is Thebausffs, the cocky top laner from Los Ratones. His channel grew by an impressive 52%.
Former elite player Rekkles, number 8 in LoL on Twitch, is also benefiting from the hype surrounding the league. The Los Ratones supporter hadn’t streamed at all in the previous month and is now starting with 1.2 million viewer hours.
Synergy effects stimulate the growth of LoL streamers on Twitch
How do streamers benefit from the league? For streamers, the league is an endless source of content: you can broadcast every training session, every practice match and every points game.
At team meetings you might close the curtain and close the stream, but a lot of what is otherwise under wraps takes place in public.
When large streamers work together, valuable synergy effects arise from which everyone involved benefits:
The enormous traction that such synergy effects develop has been seen in the past in group play in Fortnite, in role-playing games in GTA 5, in the communicative Among US or, most recently, in the WoW streamer guild OnlyFangs. All of these opportunities led to tremendous audience growth and gave some previously unknown players sudden careers.
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Is that good for LoL too? LoL has increased viewer hours by 22% in the last month and is currently the biggest game on Twitch, ahead of GTA 5, Marvel Rivals and the currently thriving WoW.
The NCL certainly also plays a crucial role here.
Germany as a role model for the rule change, but is now not benefiting from it
Why is that? Riot Games has wanted to push the regional leagues in LoL for a long time, but that went wrong:
But apparently that still wasn’t enough.
E-sports at this level were not profitable for the teams. There were too few spectators and sponsors, and some people lost a lot of money. A team from Berlin even spoke of a black hole that only swallows money.
Probably spurred on by the extreme viewership that German streamer team NNO achieved the year they were promoted to the first division, the rules have now been changed for 2025 to allow streamers to broadcast their own games.
This created a hype around the regional leagues and major streamers and ex-professionals joined forces to form teams. The English-speaking NCL is the big beneficiary of this development.
The boom could perhaps have taken place to some extent in Germany, but the most important German LoL streamers have fallen out with the German league: In the German LoL scene there is an ugly clash between the big streamers on Twitch and the league