In League of Legends, players assume the role of an unseen
"summoner" that controls a "champion" with unique abilities and battle
against a team of other players or computer-controlled champions. The
goal is usually to destroy the opposing team's "nexus", a structure
which lies at the heart of a base protected by defensive structures.
Each League of Legends match is discrete, with all champions starting
off fairly weak but increasing in strength by accumulating items and
experience over the course of the game.
League of Legends Fans in front of the Mercedes Benz Arena
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League of Legends was generally well received at release, and it
has grown in popularity in the years since. By July 2012, League of
Legends was the most played PC game in North America and Europe in terms
of the number of hours played. As of January 2014, over 67 million
people play League of Legends per month, 27 million per day, and over
7.5 million concurrently during peak hours.
League of Legends has an active and widespread competitive scene. In
North America and Europe, Riot Games organizes the Championship Series,
which consists of 10 professional teams in each continent. Similar
regional competitions exist in China, South Korea, Taiwan, South
America, and Southeast Asia. These regional competitions culminate with
the annual World Championship, which since 2013, had a grand prize of $1
million and attracted 32 million viewers online. The 2014 and 2015
tournaments each gave out one of the largest prize pools in eSports
history, at 2.3 million dollars.
Summoner's Rift
Summoner's Rift is the most popular map in League of Legends. On this
map type, two teams of five players compete to destroy an enemy building
called a Nexus, which is guarded by a number of defensive structures,
towers, and defended by the enemy team. One nexus is located in each
enemy base on opposite sides of the map, in the lower-right and
upper-left hand corners. These structures continually create weak
non-player characters known as minions, which advance toward the enemy
base along three lanes: top, bottom and middle lanes. Players compete to
advance these waves of minions into the enemy base, which allows them
to destroy enemy structures, achieve intermediate objectives, and
ultimately victory.
Between enemy lanes are more neutral areas of the map known as the
Jungle and the River. The Jungle is arrayed in four quadrants and
contains a variety of more powerful non-player characters known as
Monsters. The River bisects the map from the upper-left to the
lower-right-hand corners and contains three types of neutral Monsters,
the Scuttle Crab, Dragon, and Baron Nashor.
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Each League of Legends match involves two teams attempting to
destroy each other’s bases on a small game map while defending their
own. Players control any one of 100 champions, including demon toads,
golems, robots, gunmen and wizards, that are equipped with a wide
variety of attacks and defenses. The World Championships are played in
"Best of Five" mode. All teams are required to field a Head Coach in
their competitive matches, who will stay on stage and speak with the
team via voice-chat in the pick-ban phase of the game. This change makes
the Head Coach an officially recognized member of a team that now
consists of six members.
KOO Tigers and SK Telecom at the Press Conference prior to the League of Legends matches
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The 2015 season started in October in Paris with the group matches
(16 teams: 3 from North America, 3 from Europe, 3 from China, 3 from
South Korea, 2 from South-East Asia and two with an international wild
card), continued in London with the quarter-finals and in Brussels with
the half-finals and was completed on 31st October in Berlin with SK
Telecom accomplishing a feat no one has ever done before when they beat
KOO Tigers in a 3-1 series in front of a packed house in the
Mercedes-Benz Arena.
The final in Berlin consisted of three segments: The Opening - The Match Games - The Victory Ceremony.
At the center of the Mercedes Benz Arena an impressive 320m² stage was
erected. It was built by Studio Hamburg and consisted of 1,196 video
tiles (delivered by Mediatec) below the glass covered floor which was
surrounded by 192 video tiles and 380m rope light.
League of Legends World Championship Finals at a packed Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin
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Above the floor PRG/XL Video has constructed a massive video square
consisting of 1,279 video tiles. On 1.9km truss most of the 1,500
moving lights (including 300 Clay Paky Mythos) were positioned which
consumed most of the 5,500 amps of required power. The lighting was
controlled by grandMA lighting consoles while the content for the stage
floor video tiles was produced on a Coolux Pandora's Box.
Audio and intercom (Riedel Artist matrix) was in the hands of 3G Live
while 2CL Communications provided 115 Motorola systems to complete the
system radios.
The overall responsibility was in the hands of Production Associates
(PA). Together with TV Skyline PA took care for the set-up of the host
broadcasting infrastructure, the integration of ISO cameras for the
rights holding broadcasters from Korea (OGN) and China, as well as for
the integration of the Riot Studio in Los Angeles via a remote
production infrastructure.
PRG/XL Video has constructed a massive video square consisting of 1,279 video tiles
The Host Broadcasting Infrastructure
TV Skyline's HD8 together with PA's Flypack were the two center pieces
of the production: HD8 for the host production and the PA Flypack for
the Korean and Chinese broadcasters. A total of 27 cameras were
positioned on the stage and around - 10x LMP HD1200 POV cameras on top
of the 10 player monitors to get close-ups of the players during the
match, 17x Ikegami cameras on Triangle jibs, as handheld cameras on
stage or on tripods around the stage, in front or behind the analysts
and the commentator studios. However the commentator box of OGN (Korea)
was covered with Sony cameras. Vision mixing of all three signals was
done on Snell Kahuna mixers.
Camera Plan for the Broadcast of the League of Legends Final in Berlin
Colin Cradock, Chief Operating Officer of Production Associates at the Production Area of TV Skylines HD8
The three independently mixed signals were send via fiber to the
Riot Studio in Los Angeles. Here the Chinese signal was send via Asia
Sat5 into China and then distributed via the internet inside of China to
the Chinese spectators. The Korean signal was transferred to OGN and
found its way to the Korean spectators via OGN's TV infrastructure.
Riot's host broadcast signal was distributed from Los Angeles via the
internet to all international spectators.
League of Legends Opening Ceremony
League of Legends Stars are on Stage
League of Legends Teams are on the Play Ground
The Remote Production at the Riot Studio
After the opening ceremony (directed by Jonathan X) the host production
was switched from Berlin to Los Angeles. Therefore 20 more
camera/audio/intercom signals were transferred via a 10G infrastructure
to the Riot Studio where the game/matche signal was produced. The
director Barbara Sherwood and her team in Los Angeles had direct access
to the cameras in Berlin including the Riot commentators and the Riot
analysts.
Steve Furness and Michael Kirschner of Production Associate explain the Remote Connection between Berlin and Los Angeles
The transfer from the SDI platform to the ATP platform is a
solution developed by PA and consists of Evertz Xenon and Lawo V__4
products. Due to the fact that the Mercedes Benz Arena has installed a
fiber interface to the MTI Teleport the transfer of the production from
Berlin to Los Angeles was straight forward. For control purposes nine
return signals from Los Angeles were received in Berlin.
Chinese League of Legends comentators
The remotly from Los Angeles received League of Legends signals on the Video Square in Berlin
After the SK Telecom team had beaten the KOO Tigers 3-1 the host
production was switched back from Los Angeles to Berlin and the director
Jonathan X and his team took over for the presentation of the Victory
Ceremony where more than 13 thousand fans enthusiastically cheered the
winners.
Director Jonathan X and his team took over for the presentation of the Victory Ceremony
More than 13 thousand fans enthusiastically cheered the winners in Berlin
Team SK Telecom with the Winners Trophy
Robert Kis and Wolfgang Reeh of TV Skyline in front of the Winners Trophy
The eSport Stars
League of Legends is the undisputed king of eSports, and with the Finals
of the 2015 Worlds complete, attention begins to turn to 2016. With the
massive infusion of money for eSports events comes the inevitable
changes for teams of all shapes and budgets and the incredible grind
that the top players in the world endure takes its toll, even though
many of them are still teenagers. Money, pressure from competition, and
demands for time and endorsements cause rosters to shift and teams to
fold on a regular basis. Will SK Telecom defend their title next year?
Will KOO return to form and perhaps get stronger? Will North American
teams step up or fall further behind? Will European clubs regain their
place at the top of the world? Will South America start to play its
role?
Korean Fans travel with their Stars to all of their Matches
Most of eSport stars are aged between 19 and 25. They've started
this as a hobby, but now their salary and lifestyle allows them to
experience things they never thought were possible.
Perhaps the biggest difference between traditional sports and eSports
are the viewers. Unlike mainstream athletic competitions, which appeal
to a broad range of demographics, consumers of eSports are
overwhelmingly young. According to EEDAR (Electronic Entertainment
Design and Research) over 70 percent of League of Legends (the most
popular eSports game in terms of dollars and participants) viewers are
males, and the vast majority of them are under 26. This means a couple
of things, both of them appealing to advertisers looking to reach this
young and lucrative market – the audience will grow as more youngsters
are introduced, and as they get older, their purchasing power increases.
As of today there is not a lot of rock star halo outside of Korea.
Here around the League of Legends players a huge cult is building up.
Fans go crazy for them, they appear in TV ads, and are already more like
Football, Soccer, Basketball, Cricket or Formula 1 champions.
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