T1 Entertainment & Sports (T1) won their ninth League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) championship on the weekend, defeating top seed Gen.G in a 3-0 sweep.
The final took place in front of an empty audience in Seoul’s LoL Park, although seats were filled with cardboard cutouts of team staff and fans (pictured).
Riot Games recently cancelled the 2020 Mid-Season Invitational that was planned to occur in May, citing public health concerns regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic. Could cutouts of fans like this allow other teams to play matches at physical events as the situation around covid-19 improves in the future?
Fans were of course, still there with the teams. Audiences around the world tuned in to the event with 1.07m peak concurrent viewers according to Esports Charts, and viewership is expected to be even higher since this number does not include viewership from Chinese platforms.
This marks the highest viewership ever during the LCK regular season, with top 2020 LCK Spring Split viewership featuring T1 in matches against DragonX (semifinals) and Gen.G.
The European Championship (LEC) saw 817,397 peak concurrent viewers and the North American Championship (LCS) saw 387,299 peak concurrent viewers.
“I’m ecstatic to see T1 bring home their third consecutive LCK Championship trophy,” said Joe Marsh, CEO of T1.
“As we continue to expand the T1 brand and reach fans in every corner of the world, it’s promising to see over one million people tune in to watch the best of the best – even if it means setting an alarm at 4am for us East Coasters.”
T1’s star jungler, Moon ‘Cuzz’ Woo-chan, was named the LCK Finals MVP.
Comcast Spectacor and SK Telecom formally established the esports joint venture in October 2019 and have secured multiple sponsorship deals since the organisation’s launch. T1 also announced their partnership with BMW last week and a deal with Nike in January.
The T1 LoL team was founded in 2012 and has won three World Championships (2013, 2015 and 2016), two MSIs, nine LCK titles making it one of the most decorated LoL teams in the world. Star mid-laner Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok is the only player to have won all of the LoL international tournaments organised by Riot: MSI, Worlds, Rift Rivals and All-Star.
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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.
