Riot Games said the League of Legends World Championship will take place in-person in 2022 in San Francisco at the Chase Center.
Riot Games said the League of Legends World Championship will take place in-person in 2022 in San Francisco at the Chase Center where the Golden State Warriors play. The four cities in the overall League of Legends tour will include New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and Mexico City. The international event will span North America from the group stage to the finals. It’s also the first time the event will be held in Mexico. The event aims to breathe more life into the esports industry, which has been seeing great numbers for online-only events during the pandemic but has been missing a lot of the excitement around physical events. Market researcher Newzoo had to downgrade its revenue expectations for esports in 2020 a couple of times as the magnitude of the pandemic grew and physical event revenues dried up. But most esports online events drew much bigger audiences than in the past. The 11th League of Legends World Championship is Riot’s biggest event series of the year, and this year it took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, from October 5 to November 5. A total of 22 teams participated and Edward Gaming of China took home the top prize of nearly $500,000 as the LPL World Championship. The average audience minutes was 30.6 million (up 32%) and peak viewership was 73.8 million people. That latter number is 60% higher than last year, which was the previous record, said John Needham, president of esports at Riot Games, at a press event at the Chase Center.
