Esports One, the team behind online wiki service Esportspedia, is about to launch a fantasy League of Legends esports platform.
The move comes after developer Riot Games announced there would be no official fantasy esports league for 2020.
Riot Games commissioner Chris Greeley said on Twitter there would be no LCS fantasy for next year, but went on to list several third-party alternatives, allowing fans to still build their own team and take part in a fantasy league in a bid to earn the most points, beat their friends and climb the leaderboards.
Esports One, the first platform mentioned by Chris, reached out to Esports News UK with more info about their product.
The E1 Fantasy platform will launch on January 20th 2020 for the North American LCS and European LEC spring seasons, with the potential to expand to other LoL regions and games in the future. It’s free to join and there will be a $100,000 prize pool.
Esports One says it’s spent months developing ‘complex data science algorithms and proprietary deep machine learning models that can predict the outcome of games and determine accurate player rankings’.
It’s also running an early access competition, rewarding the biggest advocates with company stock. The top 10,000 people on the leaderboard will receive exclusive access to the inaugural $100,000 fantasy league.
Then, the top 10 people on the leaderboard will receive shares of Esports One company stock, with 50,000 shares going to 1st place and 5,000 shares going to 2nd – 10th.
E1 Fantasy will allow participants to select team captains and assign champions for bonus points, access a research dashboard, content hub and private leagues.
Riot launched its own in-house fantasy LCS offering back in 2014 but won’t be running it going forwards.
Esports One says its fantasy league is a mix between seasonal fantasy and daily fantasy.
The company also has OneView, an esports viewing tool, and OneConsole, a platform for casters to view analytics during live games.
There’s more info on the Esports One website.
Other platforms include Thrive, ESX and a user prediction feature on Gamepedia.
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.
