League of Legends World Championship

The League of Legends World Championship is the annual professional League of Legends world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games and is the culmination of each season. The first World Championship was held in 2011 at DreamHack Winter 2011 and was won by Fnatic. Teams compete for the champion title, the 70 pounds (32 kg) Summoner's Cup, and a US$1,000,000 champion prize.^[1]

Summary

Year	Finals location	Final			Semi-finalists
		Champion	Score	Runner-up
2011	Jönköping	Fnatic	2–1	against All authority	Team SoloMid
2012	Los Angeles	Taipei Assassins	3–1	Azubu Frost	Counter Logic Gaming Europe	Moscow Five
2013	Los Angeles	SK Telecom T1	3–0	Royal Club	Fnatic	NaJin Black Sword
2014	Seoul	Samsung Galaxy White	3–1	Star Horn Royal Club	OMG	Samsung Galaxy Blue
2015	Berlin	SK Telecom T1	3–1	KOO Tigers	Fnatic	Origen

Season 1

1 Championship[2] in June 2011, held at Dreamhack in Sweden, featured a US$100,000 tournament prize pool[3] with a $50,000 champion prize.[4] 8 teams from North America, Southeast Asia and Europe participated in the championship.[5]  Over 1.6 million viewers watched the streaming broadcast of the event, with a peak of over 210,000 simultaneous viewers in the final matches.[6] 

Season 2

A group picture of the Taipei Assassins, the champions of season 2.

After Season 1, Riot announced that US$5,000,000 would be paid out over Season 2. Of this $5 million, $2 million went to Riot's partners including the IGN Pro League and other major esports associations. Another $2 million went to Riot's Season 2 qualifiers and championship. The final $1 million went to other organizers who applied to Riot to host independent League of Legends tournaments.^[7]

The Season 2 World Championship was held in early October 2012 in Los Angeles, California to conclude the US$5 million season. Twelve qualifying teams from around the world participated in the championship, which boasted the largest prize pool in the history of e-sports tournaments at the time at US$2 million, with US$1 million going to the champions. The group stage, quarter-final, and semi-final matches took place between October 4 and 6. The grand final took place a week after, on October 13 in the University of Southern California's Galen Center in front of 10,000 fans, and were broadcast in 13 different languages.^[8] In the grand final, Taiwan's professional team Taipei Assassins triumphed over South Korea's Azubu Frost 3-to-1 and claimed the US$1 million in prize money.^[9]

Over 8 million viewers tuned in to the Season 2 World Championship broadcast, with a maximum of 1.1 million concurrent viewers during the grand final, making the Season 2 World Championship the most watched esports event in history at the time.^[10]

Cheating incident

During the quarter-final round of the Season 2 World Championship, Jang Gun Woong of team Azubu Frost cheated by turning his head to look at the big screen which was positioned behind him. The screen, which presents an overview of the game, is meant to be watched only by the crowd, as it displays elements that are supposed to be hidden from the players inside the game. This led to Azubu Frost being fined US$30,000.^[12][13][14]

Technical issues

During the last quarter-final best-of-three match on October 6 between European team Counter Logic Gaming EU and Chinese team World Elite, multiple technical difficulties occurred. Roughly twenty minutes into the second game, the network connection in the arena went down, terminating the live stream on Twitch.tv and disconnecting all ten players from the game, forcing a remake of the game. Then, roughly sixty minutes into the third game, the network went down again. A final attempt was made at finishing the third game, but due to more network outages and technical issues, including a player's defective computer which had to be replaced, the last game and the following semi-finals were rescheduled to be played on October 10 in the Galen Center, which was still undergoing construction work. The cause of the connection issues is uncertain, but is suspected to have been caused by faulty hardware.^{[15][16][17][18]}

Season 3

A group picture of SK Telecom T1, the champions of season 3.

The Season 3 World Championship was held in late 2013 in Los Angeles, California. 14 teams from North America, Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and one of the emerging League of Legends territories measured up at the World Playoffs after having qualified through their regional competitions.^[19] The grand final were held in the Staples Center on October 4, 2013, where Korean team SK Telecom T1 defeated the Chinese team Royal Club,^[20] granting them the title of the Season 3 world champions, the Summoner’s Cup and the $1 million prize.

The Season 3 World Championship grand final broadcast on October 4 was watched by 32 million people with a peak concurrent viewership of 8.5 million.^[21] The numbers once again beat the previous records for esports viewership, and are above those for the viewers of the 2013 NBA Finals and the 2013 World Series.^[22][23]

2014 Season

The 2014 World Championship featured 16 teams competing for a $2.13 million prize pool, with 14 teams qualifying from the primary League of Legends regions (China, Europe, North America, Korea and Taiwan/SEA) and two international wildcard teams.

The group stage began September 18 in Taipei and concluded September 28 in Singapore with eight teams advancing to the bracket stage.^[25] The bracket stage started on October 3 in Busan, South Korea, and concluded on October 19 with the grand final hosted at the 45,000-seats Seoul World Cup Stadium,^[26][27] where South Korean team Samsung Galaxy White beat the Chinese team Star Horn Royal Club to become the 2014 League of Legends world champions.^[28][29][30]

American band Imagine Dragons contributed the theme song "Warriors" for the tournament,^[31] and performed live on the grand final stage in South Korea.^[32] All games were made available for free via live streaming.^[33]

The 2014 World Championship games were streamed live by 40 broadcast partners, and cast in 19 languages. The grand final were watched by 27 million people, with concurrent viewership peaking at over 11 million viewers.^[34][35]

Racism incident

Prior to the World Championship group stage in Taipei, SK Gaming's Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen acted in a racially insensitive way while playing on the Taiwanese server, being disrespectful towards other players and naming his account "TaipeiChingChong". Johnsen was fined US$2,500 and was suspended from his team's first three games in the tournament.^[36]

2015 Season

After the 2014 Season, Riot Games introduced a number of changes to competitive League of Legends. The number of teams in the League Championship Series was increased from 8 to 10 in both the North America and Europe regions.^[37] A second Riot Games official international tournament was announced, the Mid-Season Invitational, which took place in May 2015, and featured a single team from each major region and one international wildcard.^[38] Additionally, starting from 2015, all teams are required to field a Head Coach in their competitive matches, who will stay on stage and speak with the team via voice-chat in the pick-ban phase of the game. This change makes the Head Coach an officially recognized member of the team.^[39]

The 2015 World Championship concluded the 2015 Season, and was held at several venues across Europe in October 2015. Like the 2014 World Championship, the 2015 World Championship was a multi-city, multi-country event.^[40]

The finals were watched by 36 million people, with a peak concurrent viewership of 14 million viewers.^[41]

* Easyhoon substituted Faker in multiple games throughout the tournament

Obscenity incident

During the final day of the group stage in Paris, Cloud9's Hai "Hai" Lam made an obscene gesture towards an opponent while on stage. As this breached Section 9.1.3 of the World Championship ruleset, Hai was subject to a penalty of a €500 fine.^{[43] [44]}

Technical issues

In game 2 of the quarter-finals between Fnatic and EDward Gaming, an in-game bug occurred to Fnatic's Kim "Reignover" Ui-Jin which prevented the game from continuing, forcing the game to be remade from scratch. After investigating the issue, Riot Games has decided to disable Gragas, the champion Reignover was playing, for the rest of the tournament, along with Lux and Ziggs, champions who were deemed susceptible to the same issue.^[45]

References

External links

• Official news website