League of Legends It’s an esports mountain at this point. In the years since the birth of professional gaming in the West, it has broken through and emerged amid structural changes across the globe, eventually surpassing most of its competitors, both within and outside of its genre. It even reaches sublime heights for your mom or dad to have heard of it. If you have an older sister, there’s a good chance she’s dating a mid laner, God bless her. In some places, walking around town wearing a Fnatic or Evil Geniuses t-shirt will elicit a similar reaction to a football (real or American) jersey. If I saw the Zoomer in the NA team’s merchandise, I’d probably laugh at them. If I see someone wearing an old-fashioned shalke, I’ll probably French kiss them.
But the constant grinding of those plates buried under this competitive video game world has led Riot Games to expand its growing reach into new pastures that its crown simply cannot reach. Since its release, Valorant has grown in popularity, with fans and players of its most famous competitor (CS:GO) jumping ship, leaving only the loyal players. The League of Legends mobile game Wild Rift appears to be reaching similar heights, while Legends of Runeterra is culling its audience from hardcore card duelists. This once solitary and daunting mountain has found its own family mountain.
Obviously, that’s great for Riot and its base — but with games like Project L and the far-flung Riot MMO coming out, what’s League of Legends’ role in this modern landscape? Is it still just as important to Riot’s esports success? Is it as shiny as ever, surrounded by fresher, ever-evolving games?
To find out, I flew to Malmö, Sweden for the LEC Summer Finals. There, I spoke with fans, announcers, and senior staff to come to a consensus on where League of Legends stands in the minds of its most die-hard fans, some 13 years later, on our screens.
Let’s start with the fans, the glue that holds it all together. With the first in-person spectators since 2019 due to COVID restrictions and lockdowns, the atmosphere around the arena and the adjacent LEC Expo is resilient – jumping between excitement and relaxation. Before Saturday’s game between Fnatic and Rogue, I spoke with a few participants floating around the field. “I’ve been watching it in my bedroom, so it’s a lot better than that,” marveled Alex. He and his three friends Kate, David and Owen travelled from the UK and Ireland to Malmö – each in their respective team’s shirts – to watch the final.
When asked if they still enjoyed the game, I got smirks and mild laughter from the group. “Yeah…I’m still league scum!” admits Alex, before his peers followed similar stories. “It’s frustrating at times, of course, but I still enjoy playing it now.” They’ve each played the game together for a few years, and even after all this time, are still invested in the competitive scene and the game itself.
But what about other games under the Riot Games umbrella? Well, general optimism about other RIot games, regardless of genre, is the norm, according to those on-site at this year’s biggest league event in Europe. “I recently started following Valorant and started playing it too. It’s a lot of fun!” exclaimed Harry Savage, a British-born Fnatic fan who flew across the North Sea to support his favourite team with a custom jersey on his back. “It was my first live broadcast. Back in 2017, I wanted to go to London to do one, but I was still at university and it didn’t work out.
Harry traveled to Malmö along with thousands of other like-minded players and spectators as spectators returned to the stadium, which packed the 15,500-capacity stadium over the weekend. Back home, online viewership for the LEC finals peaked at 732,573, a staggering number for an event with only three teams from one region. Compare this to CS:GO, another great and never-ending esports title with a peak audience of 762,885. For an additional audience of around 32,000, it was a massive global event with teams from all over the world. In this context, it’s hard to underestimate the ongoing impact League of Legends has had on the wider esports scene, even as more games are following its upward path.
Trevor “Quickshot” Henry, one of League of Legends’ most famous reviewers (and the weekend’s main reviewer), believes that League of Legends has developed a high-level family relationship with other Riot titles.
“It was my brother who finished college, got a great job and is now thinking about the next steps in his career,” Henry said. “As the eldest sibling, and now with younger siblings living in its shadow, you get a lot of things: first you can learn, you can share knowledge and experience. I think when you look specifically at Valorant, the ecology How the system and the esports scene is going, some features, viewing tools related to esports and broadcasting… God. I wish I had them in League of Legends.
“Secondly, I think when you look at how the ecosystem is developing and the speed at which it’s developing, you know it’s two to two-and-a-half years grassroots tournament-to-tournament, and you’re already looking for partnership models. And then you’ll be Think ‘well, it took League of Legends ten years to figure this out'”.
So League of Legends continues to grow, with sister games following the path its decades-long popularity has blazed, but how do you keep it on top? Is this even the goal? According to Alberto Guerrero, senior director of esports at the European Union, Riot has its sights set on making events like the LEC Grand Finals larger, more fan-centric events that involve players in person.
“We have the Expo for us, which is definitely a very important thing. Strategically, this is one of the areas that I think will develop in the future. I imagine we have two days of incredible competition in the future, why What about not three or four days for the community? Maybe Thursday to Sunday, they can enjoy it. Interacting with the team, interacting with the players, interacting with the partners we want to do with the fans. This is for me That’s a starting point and one of the areas I think we’re going to develop.”
As for the game itself, Alberto appears to be proud of the quality and apparent ceiling they have achieved in sporting events. The only thing that comes to mind is a wider promotion of more traditional forms of media. “I really think we deserve to be seen; I mean the radio channel. Yes, I don’t want to mention a specific medium, but we can be good content for any TV channel. For me, it’s more of” continued Do what we’re doing”, online growth is definitely coming. We’re going to the biggest closed places, we can go. We’re in every city. So I don’t think there’s really anything beyond expo where there’s a lot of room for growth different things.”
It remains to be seen whether League of Legends will stay on top three, five or 10 years from now – there’s no way to tell if another challenger will rise quickly, or if interest will suddenly wane overnight. But judging by the locals in Sweden, even 10 years from now, it’s hard to say this isn’t the Everest of gaming — at least for now.
