To celebrate and show support for Nordic League of Legends talent at Worlds 2022, Riot Games has today released a hype video.
It’s focused on the six Nordic-born professional players that qualified and are competing in the 2022 League of Legends World Championship.
The video is also narrated by 19-year-old Danish LoL caster Duckling, who has cast in the EU Masters and also the UK, Ireland and Nordics European Regional League (ERL): the NLC.
As a news site that historically covers UK League of Legends, which is now grouped with our Nordic brothers and sisters, we are all to happy to cover this and shout about Nordic LoL talent.
Duckling thanked League and Fnatic for letting him get involved:
The six players are (from Denmark) Rasmus “CaPs” Borregaard Winther from G2 Esports, Martin “Wunder” Nordahl Hansen from Fnatic, Nikolaj “Jensen” Jensen and Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen from Cloud9, and (from Sweden) Emil “Larssen” Larsson from Rogue and William “UNF0RGIVEN” Nieminen from MAD Lions.
Larssen is also a League of Legends pro player that emerged from the grassroots UK esports scene years ago, having helped UK orgs like Manalight (RIP) and MNM Gaming do well in tournaments like the old ESL LoL Premiership. Larssen was then called up to Rogue’s LEC first team in 2019.
A Riot press release states that Worlds is the most-watched esports event in the world, with last year’s final in Reykjavik boasting over 73m concurrent viewers at its peak.
This year, Worlds takes place in North America, giving Riot Games the opportunity to film the video at Almannagjá in Iceland, a unique valley where the European and North American tectonic plates meet.
Central to the video is the use of the now-iconic “Viking Clap” – first made popular worldwide during the UEFA Euro 2016, as the Icelandic national men’s football team outperformed all expectations. From Malmö, Sweden during the 2022 LEC Summer Finals to Sjøholt Folk High School among the fjords in western Norway, each video has been recorded by supporters in the Nordics.
The Worlds Group Stage is currently underway in New York City and will be closely followed by the quarter finals from October 20th to 23rd. Semifinals will be held from October 29th to 30th in Atlanta, with the 2022 Worlds Final taking place on November 5th in San Francisco, featuring an opening ceremony performance by two-time Grammy award-winning artist, Lil Nas X.
And Esports News UK will also be reporting from the 2022 Worlds final, thanks to the help of Greyscale, Jakub and Ravish:
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.
