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| A crowd at Jamsil Sports Complex watches a championship final for League of Legends, hosted by LoL Champions Korea, in 2019. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government |
By Ko Dong-hwan
With support from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, a championship match for the Korean league of League of Legends (LoL) in April will be held at the Jamsil Sports Complex in Seoul next month.
It will be the first time that the city government and LoL Champions Korea, which organizes the globally popular online game's professional league in Korea, jointly hosts the event since it was first held in 2011.
The event, to be held on April 8 and 9, is expected to see over 20,000 people at the stadium and will be streamed live worldwide in Korean, English, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Japanese. In 2022, the match recorded a peak simultaneous viewership of 5.17 million.
Seeing esports as a rising future industry, the city government has been supporting local firms in staging the games and selling the content to broader business channels. The authority currently plans to take small to mid-size local game-makers to markets abroad.
"The Seoul city government has provided us with a huge support so that our championship match can welcome many fans in the large-scale venue," Lee Jung-hoon, the chief director of LoL Champions Korea, said. "Since the event is held at Jamsil in four years, the event is being organized so that esports fans at the stadium can enjoy the match safely."
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| Griffin and T1, Korean League of Legends teams, competed in a championship final hosted by LoL Champions Korea at Jamsil Sports Complex in 2019. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government |
The championship final is vied for by three top-ranking teams who advance from preliminary matches held from Jan. 18 to this coming Sunday. The losers' final is on April 8 and the championship final is played the following day.
Alongside the match, the city government invited 100 children from multicultural families and orphanages in the city to an Esports Culture Tour at the stadium. It is part of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon's main agenda for his mayoral term: stepping in alongside the city's vulnerable groups.
Together with LoL Champions Korea, the city authority will usher the guests to their seats for the championship match. They will also be introduced to the behind-the-scenes operations of an esports event and shown backstage and onstage during the final matches. Through the visits, they will consider careers in the esports industry, according to the city government.
"This will be our starting point to encourage the vulnerable groups in Seoul to venture into esports, and to promote our hosting of the championship finals to 20,000 audience members and global esports fans across the world," Kim Tae-kyun, Economic Policy Office Chief from the city government, said.
Korean esports players boast a prominent presence in the global League of Legends scene. LoL World Championship, the biggest esports event hosted by American game developer Riot Games since 2011, saw its championship final in 2022 in San Francisco played by "DRX" and "T1," two Korean teams from the Korean LoL professional league.
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