This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.
Riot's Media Day. Photo Credits : Travis Gafford.
To start things off, Riot announced that they've completely sold out Sangam Stadium for the Season 4 finals. For those unaware, the Sangam Stadium is also known as the Seoul World Cup Stadium and is the second largest stadium in Korea, after the Jasmil Olympic Stadium.
Seoul World Cup Stadium. Photo Credits: Energy KoreaSangam is also the largest football (soccer) stadium in Asia and has a capacity of over 66,000. The League of Legends finals won’t be using the stadium to its maximum capacity but 40,000 tickets sold for an esports event is still quite impressive.
Dustin Beck, VP of esports, discussed how Riot has been levelling up the ecosystem of players and points to the introduction of coaches as official team members as an example. Beck said that Riot views coaching staff as a big component of successful teams.
Riot are working to localize all the regional leagues so fans can follow them more easily. Hopefully this means official English casters for the Chinese LPL, the folks over at LPLen have done a fantastic job covering the LPL this year but have struggled with technical issues due to the broadcast not having the same production level as the LCS and Korea’s The Champions. More Brazilian coverage will also be appreciated by those interested in the region.
The Brazilian and Turkish regionals in Rio De Janeiro and Istanbul were comparable to Season 3’s World Championships at the Staples Centre in terms of Scale according to Beck, and judging from the pictures of the events (Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Los Angeles), that comparison seems pretty spot on.
The rumours surrounding Korean format changes and the potential cancellation of OGN Winter took up a significant chunk of Question and Answer time. We don't have much to report on this besides Riot dodging questions and stating that they are working with OGN and KeSPA.
Next year’s All Stars will be more competition focused (so more like 2014, rather than 2013) but Riot is considering hosting more fun events during the off season. Riot aims to host Worlds in multiple countries again and feel results from 2014 were good but that they needed to manage expectations better. Riot also stated that they'll be planning events far earlier so visa issues - such as the ones that plagued Gambit Gaming’s travel to London - don’t occur again.
When quizzed about potential international event locations for next year, Riot stated that they are still looking at locations and that China was included on the list. They also teased a potential announcement with Curse.
Riot’s focus will be on improving production, experience and reach in the upcoming years as they believe that it was harder to get bigger than a World Cup stadium, but CEO Brandon Beck predicts that esports will become an Olympic sport in the future. "I believe in my lifetime esports will be part of the Olympic Games” said Beck.