The E-sports year in League of Legends is actually clearly organized: there are two major tournaments, the MSI and the Worlds. However, in 2024, a third international tournament took place: at the Esports World Cup, the EWC, 8 of the best LoL teams in the world competed against each other. The prize pool was 1 million US dollars.
What kind of tournament is this?
- The Esports World Cup is an event in Saudi Arabia, with a total prize pool of $62.5 million. In the LoL tournament, 1 million $ was contested. The winner received $400,000.
- 8 teams competed, with 2 from each of the major regions. They were the biggest teams in the world: T1 with Faker, G2 with Caps, Gen G. with Chovy. So exactly the teams that normally also compete for a world championship.
- It was a pure knockout tournament. The 8 teams started directly with the quarter-finals in a best-of-3 format. The winners then moved to a best-of-3 final. The actual final was played as a best-of-5.
But the tournament was unable to impress compared to Worlds and the MSI.
Who won it? The world champions T1 won the tournament. They overcame Top Esports in the final.
Top Esports looked almost invincible on the way to the final; they had won their first two matches 2-0 each. While T1 had lost one of the 3 games in each case.
Even in the final, it seemed as if the Chinese team TES with Knight was clearly on the path to victory when they swept T1 off the Rift in the 1st match in just 23 minutes. But Faker and his men came back and won 3 games in a row to claim the title.
This is how it went for the other teams: The Western teams Team Liquid (USA) and G2 shared 3rd and 4th place.
FlyQuest and Fnatic, as well as Bilibili Gaming and Gen G. were eliminated in the first round. However, there was a lot of bad luck involved, as the two strong Asian teams faced the eventual finalists from Asia in the first round. Meanwhile, the Western teams played against each other in the first round: G2 defeated FlyQuest, Team Liquid eliminated Fnatic.
Lowest viewer numbers for a LoL final since 2018.
How were the viewer numbers? On their own, quite okay, but disappointing compared to other LoL events. On average, the event had 565,093 viewers. At its peak, 1.1 million viewers watched T1 in the final.
However, compared to the Worlds and the MSI, this was disappointing. Thus, the final was the “least watched final” since the MSI 2018.
What were the problems? DotEsports lists:
- Riot Games did not promote the event
- Since the World Cup took place in Saudi Arabia, the event’s time zone was unfortunate for many LoL fans
- The tournament format with pure elimination matches was said to be “outdated”.
You might also speculate that some fans were not really pleased that the event took place in Saudi Arabia. Although the country, where homosexuality is criminalized, signaled a sign of relaxation before the event: LoL: At an E-Sports tournament in Saudi Arabia for a fantastic prize pool, a team is now allowed to wear Pride jerseys
