The League of Legends (LoL) Worlds 2022 final co-stream line-up has been announced, and several personalities in the space have debated the selection choice.
Those co-streaming the finals broadcast this weekend between DRX and T1 will be:
- Sykkuno (English co-stream)
- Rita (Chinese co-stream)
- Mingyo Kim (Korean co-stream)
- Sangho Lee (Korean co-stream)
- Ibai (Spanish co-stream)
These are all popular streamers, with US streamer Sykkuno having 4m followers on Twitch and Spanish personality Ibai having more than 11m followers on Twitch, and more than 11m on Twitter for example.
Ibai also founded esports org Koi, who recently partnered with Rogue as he became an ambassador for the org.
British LEC caster and Excel Esports streamer Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont took to Twitter to say the following regarding the co-stream announcement: “As much as its awesome they’re giving it to big personalities, this is a huge fucking slap in the face to League content creators who have been grinding co streaming all year long and are really really passionate about the League esports scene. Really disappointing to see to be honest.”
This opened up a debate on the topic, with Fnatic LEC head coach Yamatocannon saying in response to Caedrel’s tweet: “It’s good business.”
Esports personality MonteCristo responded to this, saying so is keeping a game’s content creators happy:
Yamatocannon later expanded on his initial tweet on a livestream while reading this article, saying: “If you’re going to do this [with a limited number of co-streamers], we should target audiences that might not necessarily want to watch the World Championship.
“If you think about the players that will watch my stream, LS’ stream, IWillDominate’s stream… these are people that would watch the World Championship regardless. Ibai is one of the most famous people in all of esports, and it’s not like he’s completely unrelated to League.
“These streamers offer a different viewing experience for people who might not want to watch the World Championship. In order for Riot to get the most amount of viewers for Worlds, it needs to be accessible.”
One Twitter user complimented Ibai’s inclusion in the line-up, and Caedrel responded: “Ibai is and always will be a fucking beast and has done insane amounts of work for the League scene, not here to discredit him at all, just it’s really sad they’re not supporting hardcore League creators who have been co-streaming all year.”
Team Liquid streamer AverageJonas also said the line-up decision was ‘just business’, something that Excel co-founder Kieran Holmes-Darby agreed with:
Former LEC caster Froskurinn also added that it was ‘disappointing Riot won’t invest more in their localised English speaking content creators’, saying it was bizarre that streamers like IWillDominate and LS weren’t included.
Many others weighed in on the announcement, with some criticising Riot Games for the line-up, and others justifying it.
Sykkuno responded to the debate around the Worlds co-stream situation, saying Riot is not paying him for this, but that they reached out and asked him to do a co-stream.
The grand final broadcast of the League of Legends World Championship will take place on the evening of Saturday November 5th and into the early hours of Sunday November 6th 2022 in UK’s GMT time zone.
The match between South Korean orgs DRX and T1 is set to begin at midnight UK time on Sunday morning.
Esports News UK is also hosting a Worlds 2022 grand finals viewing party presented by Predator Gaming at Platform gaming bar.
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.
