These past two weeks saw three HUGE eSports events take place. First up was Worlds for League of Legends. This year featured two Korean teams, the KOO Tigers, and SKT T1 competing for the championship. This is the first time at the Worlds that an all Korean finals took place. SKT T1 was the overwhelming favorite coming into the finals, and they did not disappoint. Faker was omnipresent, seemingly everywhere and just the threat of him appearing was too much for KOO as they fell 3 games to 1. SKT T1 became the first team to repeat as Champions. The final numbers haven’t come in yet for total viewership, but we know for sure that well over 1,000,000 people were watching concurrently on Twitch. That is a huge accomplishment alone for eSports, but it’s only the beginning.
We then had a great DreamHack event occur in Cluj-Napoca. We had great showings from all the teams, but Team EnVyUs put together a solid performance from top and bottom to win. It was nice to see Team EnVyUs just outplay all of their opponents in a Major. The production of DreamHack was superb as well. Watching on stream and witnessing actual pyrotechnics was crazy for eSports.
Last but not least was BlizzCon. Taking place in Anaheim, attendees had the opportunity to see a bevy of different Blizzard eSports events, try out new games, listen to Blizzard employees speak about different topics in gaming, and even attend a Linkin Park concert. We were able to attend this event, and it was an awesome experience top to bottom. We enjoyed so much about this event it deserves its own post. Just to highlight one thing, watching Cloud9 win the very first Heroes of the Storm championship was awesome. The crowd energy was electric as they all wanted the American team to win. Heroes of the Storm is an exciting up and coming game in the eSports scene and we can only imagine the growth that game will see in the next year.
It’s so nice to be able to have all of these events happening all around the world, and for people to be able to enjoy them together, whether they actually attend or view them online. We can’t wait for the next one.