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Riot Games will launch the League of Legends: Wild Rift esports tournament in late 2021.
The company hopes to apply the lessons of a decade of League of Legends esports to the mobile game. Riot Games wants to build a similar community for Wild Rift. It made the announcement this morning on the eve of the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational tournament.
League of Legends: Wild Rift is a 5-on-5 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) experience of League of Legends, developed for console and mobile by Riot Games. Wild Rift brings League to new platforms, featuring competitive gameplay, a twin-stick control system, and a roster of over 60 champions to take to the Rift, with two more coming every month this year.
John Needham, the global head of esports at Riot Games, said in a statement that Riot believes mobile gaming will transform the future of esports. The company didn’t specify whether the Wild Rift esports tournament would be an in-person or digital event.
Needham also noted that regional teams will qualify for this tournament in the fourth quarter of the year.
A worldwide competition
Above: The stage for the Riot Games esports event.
Image Credit: Riot Games
Regional Wild Rift Esports competitions have already started around the world. Southeast Asia recently concluded the first official esports competition, the SEA Icon Series: Preseason. The five week-long event took place in multiple locations: Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore and featured 54 professional teams.
Leo Faria is global head of Wild Rift esports. He said in a statement that a number of esports organizations have announced their Wild Rift teams. In Southeast Asia, organizations like The Alliance, RRQ, and LoL Esports veterans Flash Wolves all announced Wild Rift rosters. More big names are coming, he said.
Faria said that a regional competition schedule, third-party tournament guidelines, and more information about the global event will be revealed later this year.
Other big events
Above: The Masters Trophy
Image Credit: Riot Games
Other events include the Valorant Stage 3 Masters event, which will increase in size with 16 teams in attendance. It will take place from September 9 to September 19. The winner of Masters: Berlin will automatically qualify into Valorant Champions where a single team will be crowned the best Valorant team of 2021. HyperX will sponsor that event as a keyboard and mouse partner. Other Riot partners include Spotify and Verizon. More than 2,000 teams have participated in qualifying events.
Cisco will be providing the network supporting MSI in Iceland and Riot Games’ production centers in Berlin and Los Angeles. For the first time, pro teams at MSI will be able to practice from the comfort of their hotel rooms on the same high-performance servers at ultra low ping.
Riot is also launching a new podcast that will be available exclusively on Spotify that will cover trending LoL Esports news from around the world. The episodes will be hosted by Riot Games personalities and will drop weekly throughout the year.
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