The 2022 Wild Rift Icons Global Championship broadcast talent line-up has been announced, and it includes UK caster Stuart ‘iTzSTU4RT’ Gilson.
The Icons finals are essentially the world championship for League of Legends mobile game Wild Rift, and will take place at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition Center in Singapore from June 14th to July 9th 2022.
Icons’ broadcast talent line-up includes two casters from Europe – iTzSTU4RT and Dutch caster HellsDevil. The full line-up (including regions) is as follows:
- Grandon – SEA
- Mika – SEA
- Omo – SEA
- Riku – SEA
- HellsDevil – EU
- iTzSTU4RT – EU
- Kangas – NA
- Raafaa – NA
- TJ – NA
- dGon – NA
24 teams will fight for a share of the $2m prize pool, with the play-ins stage running from June 14th to 18th, the group stage from June 21st to 25th and the knockout stage from July 1st to 9th.
UK esports organisation Rix.gg is are starting in the play-ins stage after finishing runners-up at the Wild Rift EMEA Championship 2022 Season 1 finals last month. They also have UK player Snitch on their roster, and will face Korean giants T1 in their opening game at Icons.
While there is $2m in prize money up for grabs, Riot Games will also be sharing a percentage of revenue generated from the Majestic Empress Morgana skin sales, which will be distributed equally between the top eight team at the tournament.
There will also be Twitch drops available to viewers who link their Riot Account to Twitch on the Wild Rift Esports Twitch channel, with an exclusive Wild Rift in-game reward available at each stage of the tournament: an icon, frame, emote and recall effect.
This is the first full Icons finals in Wild Rift’s first esports season, following last year’s Horizon Cup, which was billed as a start-up tournament in ‘season zero’ of the game.
Icons was originally due to take place in Europe, but was moved to Singapore following visa application delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘I’m prepared, ready and excited to watch some Wild Rift!’ – iTzSTU4RT
We interviewed iTzSTU4RT ahead of the Wild Rift EMEA Championship 2022 Season 1 finals – and caught up with him again to ask about being part of the Icons broadcast team.
“I’ve never been to Singapore before, so it’s a new experience for me,” iTzSTU4RT told Esports News UK, ahead of his flight to Singapore today. “I’m quite excited because I only started casting less than a year ago, back in October 2021. I never thought I’d be going to the world championship in Singapore.
“I’m excited to support Europe as well – all the teams – and to see everyone from different regions. I guess I’m ready to prove myself, that this is something I’m good at doing and can see myself doing in the long haul as well. So I’m prepared, ready and excited to watch some Wild Rift!
“In terms of the favourite regions for the tournament, it’ll probably be either China or Korea, so FPX or KT Rolster respectively. KT Rolster finished fourth in the Horizon Cup last year and Chinese teams Da Kun and ThunderTalk finished first and second respectively. “So I think China are the favourites and they have four teams competing at Icons.
“I guess I’m ready to prove myself, that this is something I’m good at doing and I can see myself doing in the long haul as well. I have a dedicated community who come into my stream and I want to put on a good show for them.”
iTzSTU4RT
“I think Wild Rift is similar to PC League [in terms of China and Korea being dominant], because the mobile market in the Eastern world is so much bigger than the Western world. Us and America and Brazil etc are still catching up to how good and popular mobile games are in the Eastern region.”
When asked what he thinks of the videos of iTzSTU4RT’s face being zoomed into by Hotdrop’s head of social media Nathan Edmonds, Stuart laughs.
He said: “It was so funny when he did that before. When I looked at my phone and saw it, I was trying to hold my laughter in! I have a lot of people that support me as well, like Nathan Edmonds and Sara Leghari, and I have a lot of people from my community that I think will be excited [about me being at Icons] as well.
“Obviously I haven’t been able to tell anyone from my community yet, but I think when the word gets out there, they’ll be excited for me and it’ll be good. A lot of people on my stream have been asking me if I’m going to Icons and I haven’t been able to say anything until now. I have a dedicated community who come into my stream and I want to put on a good show for them.”
Wild Rift first launched on mobiles at the end of 2020.
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.
