Is the UK LoL community dwindling?

There are several UK community groups around League of Legends, from LoL UK to LoL London, to the League of Legends Scotland Community and more.

With interest around Pokemon Go and Overwatch of late, one of the UK Facebook groups has a point: is the UK League community dwindling?

Tom Villiers, Choke Gaming manager and former League of Legends UK admin, said: “It’s difficult to say, I think there’s a number of issues: dynamic queue, current meta is poor, then you have things like Overwatch and Pokemon Go taking a lot of the limelight recently, but things like Worlds/Leaguefest which Riot invest heavily into, will still get big turnouts in my opinion.

“Smaller community events and the communities in general are struggling, but I feel it’s for a number of factors as stated above. I felt LoL London was at it’s prime when Gary Kimmelman was helping to run the group, he moderated the content well and actually run community events in London to get people more involved.”

UK League member Gary Kimmelman added: “I think everything is fine in the community as a whole and the rant is simply highlighting a decline in member content appearing in the London Facebook group. I still monitor the Facebook groups including the LoL London one as it was the first LoL community Facebook Group I ever joined and has a sentimental value to me.
“The first step to be taken is to remove users who are only in the group to advertise/spam their twitch/YouTube/page as there is currently more of these posts than any other, which makes the page feel unwelcoming and uninteresting to browse for members both old and new.

“The LoL London group has a history of drama and good times and it’s how I met key community members Luke Ray and Emily Hang, both of which are passionate about LoL and the pro scene.
“TL;dr – the group is fine, just get rid of those pesky spammers. It’s the community/player base which grew the game to what it is today, and it’s the same community which continues to support the game and keep it going.”

League of Legends London admin Luke Ray commented: “The rest of the admin team and I will be having discussions this week in regards to the current status of League in the UK and London, along with ways to improve activity within all of the League communities across the UK.

“Personally, I believe many have chosen to take breaks from LoL in favour of other games such as Overwatch and Pokemon Go. The shift could possibly be due to many changes within LoL and Riot Games themselves, since Tencent bought the remaining equity of the company.”

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.