China set to host 2021 LoL World Championship Finals

The 2021 League of Legends (LoL) World Championship Finals will be held in Shenzhen, China.

“After a year full of unexpected challenges, amazing competition and major milestones for our sport, we’re looking forward to a season that should be even more thrilling. It’s only fitting that we return to China, home to our biggest league and tens of millions of longtime fans, to produce the world’s highest-calibre esports event in one of China’s most innovative cities”

John Needham, Global Head of Esports at Riot Games

This is the second year that China will host the esports Tournament after the 2020 edition of the competition was hosted by Shanghai. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the original 56,000-seat Shanghai Stadium was only able to seat a limited live audience.

What can we expect from 2021’s Championship?

It’s hard to imagine the amount of success that will come to the Worlds this year. However, last years competition could shed some light on what we can expect. In 2020 it was recorded that 139.86 million hours of the Worlds had been viewed by their audience. This 139.86 million hours was double the amount of hours watched in Spring, which earned a mighty 65.91 million hours.

In near second place, the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) posted 136.65 million hours of watch in 2020. With League of Legends European Championship (LEC) winning third place at 72.89 million hours.

In addition to the success of the LoL Worlds Finals, it has been announced that the peak viewers and average viewers have reached 3.88 million and 1.11 million. Therefore, topping the charts in both categories.

China famously hosted the finals at the Beijing National Stadium in 2017 before 2020. As a result of the pandemic, new health and safety policies will be in place to reduce any risks for team members.

The safety regulations have not yet been approved. Although it is intended to allow all team members to travel to a range of cities within China before the final in Shenzhen. The other host cities have yet to be revealed to us, but keep your ear to the ground for the months ahead.

Shenzhen is known for their notorious creativity, making it the perfect venue for the League of Legend World Championship. They may face barriers with health and safety initiatives as a result of the pandemic. However, with Shenzhen’s innovative reputation it’ll be worth waiting to see how they top last year, watch this space!

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