Update: The MSI tickets on-sale date, prices and venue have now been revealed as LoL esports heads to London.
Original article: MSI London tickets will soon go on sale, Riot Games has confirmed as it hopes to help its esports fans better plan attending events in advance.
Naz Aletaha, global head of League of Legends esports at Riot Games, said MSI tickets will be available more than three or four weeks before the start of the event in May, in an interview with Travis Gafford.
It’s been a criticism of Riot that it doesn’t always allow a long enough period of time for fans to buy tickets, with them often going on sale very close to the event start date. And Riot is now looking to address this.
Naz said: “You can expect MSI tickets, information about venue and schedule to come out in mid to late February. And it’ll be the same thing for Worlds, we’ll give a really long runway so that fans can make their plans, and we can’t wait to see them in our venues.
“We want to give fans many months to be able to buy tickets and make their arrangements. That’s a pain point for our fans we are absolutely going to address.”
Naz Aletaha, Riot Games
“We want to provide the best esports experience, whether you’re watching at home, travelling to one of our arenas, or travelling to an international event. And part of that experience is the planning, the travel and being bale to have the runway you need to be able to do that effectively.
“So that’s something we’re working on with all of our teams across the board. And we have some other announcements [on Worlds tickets] and for the LCS roadshows and what you can expect there too.”
The MSI 2023 dates and host city London were confirmed earlier this month, with the event taking place from Tuesday May 2nd to Sunday May 21st, and the venue still to be announced.
Riot also recently revealed in an LEC competitive FAQ that the winner of the LEC 2023 Spring Split will head to London as MSI first seeds, while the winner of the 2023 Winter Split will represent EMEA on stage as the second seeds.
League of Legends and Valorant audience crossover
Riot also spoke about the crossover between the Valorant audience and the League of Legends audience in the interview, with Naz saying that about 35 to 40% of LEC fans also watch the North American LCS.
John Needham, president of esports at Riot Games, said: “A lot of the time we were cannibalising ourself by not programming Valorant correctly, with it overlapping [with] League of Legends.
“Also, within League of Legends there’s a lot of shared audience between the LCS and LEC. Eight hours or more of esports on Saturday between the LCS and LEC just isn’t a great fan experience and it forces a choice on our fans, on which league they’re going to watch.
“We wanted to give each regional league its own time, slot and day compared to other regional leagues. We wanted to give each league and each sport its own window so we didn’t have to force choices on our fans. That’s why LCS is in the week, the Americas VCT league is on the weekend, and in Europe, it’s the reverse.”
In other related League of Legends esports news, the 2023 LEC Season Finals are heading to Montpellier Occitanie in France.
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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.
