Wild Rift, the League of Legends game built for mobile devices, will be getting its own esports activities this year.
Riot Games has announced initial plans for Wild Rift esports in Southeast Asia, with regional and global activities to follow, Riot announced in a Season Start livestream on the Riot Games Twitch channel and a post on the LoL Esports website.
In Southeast Asia, the season will kick off with ‘several smaller, intermittent competitive events through March’.
Then, in April, there will be eight location-specific tournament circuits, where teams can compete for the title of local champion and will have the opportunity to battle it out with other local champions at a later date.
Last month, Riot Games appointed ESL as tournament operator for Wild Rift in Malaysia and Thailand.
“The Wild Rift open beta has been very successful and we’re excited about the future,” said John Needham, head of global esports at Riot Games.
“Like League on PC, Wild Rift is wildly competitive, with the depth, complexity and high-stakes moments that make for a great sport.
“While it’s still incredibly early, we’re all very excited to bring our passion and dedication for esports to mobile. We’re committed to building this authentic League experience for years to come and planning to get things started with Wild Rift esports in 2021.”
Wild Rift launched in the UK and Europe on December 10th 2020 with its regional open beta.
The mobile game has reportedly been downloaded more than 5m times worldwide since the launch of the beta.
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.
