League of Legends is an esports mountain at the moment. Over the years since the early days of Western professional gaming, it has broken through and risen through tectonic shifts on the global stage, eventually towering over the majority of its competitors both within its genre – and beyond. It has even reached the lofty heights necessary for your mother or father to hear about it. There’s a good chance if you have a sister, she’s dated a mid laner, god help her. Walking around town wearing a Fnatic or Evil Geniuses T-shirt can elicit a reaction similar to a (real or American) football shirt in certain places. When I see a zoomer in an NA team’s merch, it makes me laugh. When I see someone in old-fashioned shalke clothes, I tend to French kiss them.
But those records buried under this world of competitive video games continue to grind, leading to Riot Games extending its ever-growing influence into new pastures that its crown title simply cannot achieve. Valorant has become hugely popular since its release, with fans and players of its most notable competitor (CS:GO) jumping ship leaving only the loyal ones behind. Wild Rift, the League of Legends mobile game, seems to be growing to similar heights, while Legends of Runeterra is knocking out its own audience among the hardcore card duellers. This once lonely, terrifying mountain has found a series of familial peaks.
This is great for Riot and its base, of course – but with titles like Project L and the distant Riot MMO on the way, what’s the role of League of Legends in this modern landscape? Is it still as important, as essential to the success of Riot esports? Is it as shiny as it used to be, surrounded by fresher, growing games?
To find out, I flew to Malmö, Sweden for the LEC Summer Split final. There I spoke to fans, shoutcasters and senior staff to find some consensus about where League of Legends is in the hearts and minds of its most hardcore fans some 13 years after it arrived on our screens.
Let’s start with the fans, the glue that holds this whole thing together. With the first live audience since 2019 due to COVID restrictions and lockdowns, the vibes around the arena and adjacent LEC expo were elastic – bouncing between an aura of excitement and one of relief. Before the Saturday match between Fnatic and Rogue, I spoke to several attendees floating around the venue. “I watched it from my bedroom, so this is much better than that,” exclaims Alex. He and his three friends Kate, David and Owen traveled from the UK and Ireland to Malmö – each in their respective team kit – to watch the final.
When asked if they are all still enjoying the game, I get a grin and lukewarm laughter from the group. “Yeah…I’m still a degenerate League!” Alex admits, before his peers follow with similar stories. “Of course it can be frustrating at times, but I still enjoy playing even now.” Each of them, having played the game together for several years, remains invested in the competitive scene and the game itself even after all this time.
But what about the other titles that fall under the Riot Games umbrella? According to those in attendance at Europe’s biggest League event this year, a general optimism about other RIot titles, regardless of genre, was the norm. “I recently started following Valorant and started playing it. It’s pretty fun!” exclaims Harry Savage, a UK born and bred Fnatic fan who flew across the North Sea to support his favorite team with a special shirt on his back. “This is my very first live event. I wanted to go to one in London in 2017, but I was in college and just couldn’t make it then.
Harry, along with literally thousands of other like-minded players and spectators, made the trip to Malmö now that the crowds were back in the arena, and the 15,500 capacity arena packed up this weekend. Back home, the LEC finals hit 732,573 peak viewers online, a staggering number for an event with just three teams from one region. Compare this to CS:GO, another outstanding and endlessly popular esports title, which had 762,885 spectators. For approximately 32,000 additional viewers, it was a major global event with teams from all over the world. In that context, it’s hard to discount the lingering impact League is having on the wider esports landscape, even as additional games follow their path upwards.
Trevor “Quickshot” Henry, one of the most prominent commentators for League of Legends (as well as a large weekend presence), sees League forging a senior, family relationship with other Riot titles.
“It’s the older brother who’s finishing college, has a great job, and is now figuring out the next career move,” Henry says. “And as the oldest sibling who now has younger siblings living in his shadow, you get several things: first of all, you learn, you can share knowledge and experience. I think if you look at Valorant in particular, the way the ecosystem and the esports scene is evolving, some of the features, the viewer tools related to esports and broadcasting… God. I wish I had them in League of Legends.
“Second, I think if you look at how the ecosystem has evolved and the speed at which it’s evolved, you know it’s two/two and a half years from some sort of grassroots tournament to tournament and you’re already looking at partnership. models. Then you think ‘okay, League of Legends took ten years to figure that out’”.
So you have League that continues to grow, and you have sister games that follow a path charted by its decades-long progression to popularity, but how do you keep it in a leadership position? Is that also the goal? According to Alberto Guerrero, senior director of esports for the EU, Riot has its eyes set on turning events like the LEC Finals into bigger, more fan-centric events that will personally bring players to the events.
“We have the expo in front of us, which is certainly very important. Strategically, it’s one of the areas I think will grow in the future. I envision a future where we have two incredible days of competition, and why not three or four days of community activities? Maybe they can enjoy themselves from Thursday to Sunday. Interacting with the teams, interacting with the players, with the partners we have who want to do things with the fans. This is a starting point for me and is one of the areas where I think we will grow.”
As for the competition itself, Alberto seems proud of the quality and apparent ceiling they have reached in terms of physical events. The only thing that comes to mind is a wider range of more traditional media forms. “I really think we deserve to be seen; I mean channels. Yes, I don’t want to mention specific media, but we can be good content for any TV channel. For me it’s more about ‘keep doing what we’re doing’ and the growth online will definitely come. We’re going to the biggest closed locations we can get to. We are in every city. So I can’t really imagine anything other than the expo thing that has a lot of room to grow.”
Whether League of Legends will stay at the top in three, five or 10 years remains to be seen. But judging by the people on the ground in Sweden, even 10 years later, it’s hard to argue that it’s not gaming’s Everest — at least now.
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