Founded in 2006, the company released its first title, “League of Legends,” three years later. The game was quickly adopted by competitive video gamers and is today one of the most popular and enduring titles in the rapidly growing esports industry.
“League of Legends” has been so successful Riot waited a full decade before releasing a second game. The company, which was purchased by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. in 2011, has released three new titles in the last two years: a pair of “League of Legends” spinoffs playable on mobile devices and an entirely new game called “Valorant.”
The latter title pits teams of players against one another in a shooter combat format that takes cues from popular esports games like Valve Corp.’s “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” and Activision Blizzard Inc.’s “Overwatch.”
It expands Riot’s already significant presence in the landscape of professional gaming and provides new opportunities for the many Los Angeles-based esports organizations that have helped make Riot’s first game an industry phenomenon.
Chris Greeley, who heads Riot’s North American esports operations, said esports has become a big enough business that it’s now possible for companies like Riot to develop titles with professional gamers specifically in mind.
“Esports has become more of a consideration for publishers,” he said. “Ten years ago, when ‘League of Legends’ was rolling out, no one presumed there was going to be this competitive scene.”
Riot’s first game wasn’t designed as a spectator sport, but it draws huge audiences. The “League of Legends” 2020 World Championship event logged peak viewership of 45 million, and its tournaments frequently pull in larger audiences than a typical National Basketball Association playoff game.
Greeley, who serves as commissioner of Riot’s “League Championship Series,” helped establish a franchise model for the game in 2018 in which teams paid $10 million to buy into the league, agreeing to share revenue from advertising and sponsorship deals.
In the turbulent business of esports, games can go in and out of fashion quickly, however, and competition is fierce for the sponsorship deals necessary to cover the cost of player salaries and the staff and infrastructure to support them. “League of Legends” has proven to have exceptional staying power, and the teams participating in the League Championship Series — all of which are based in or have offices in L.A. — are some of the most visible, and most valuable, in the esports industry.
Greeley said it’s too early to say whether “Valorant” will be able to support a similar franchise structure, but the company has had the luxury of being able to work with teams, broadcasters and viewers from the get-go, engineering the game specifically for esports success.
“We’re talking to professional organizations and professional players to understand their pain points and the things that really drive businesses and get competitive juices going,” said Greeley.
Fan feedback
Fan feedback
“You get a huge head start working in game genres that are well defined, but they are very crowded, and fans have their preferences. You’re really trying to displace fans from other games,” Greeley said.
“The thing in esports is that we can look at broadcasts coming in from other (shooter games), and we see the elements we like, but at the same time we look at it with a discerning eye and think this could be different, or better, or more innovative,” he added.
To many gamers, this game development process is one of the most intriguing aspects of esports.
While in traditional sports, occasional rule changes might subtly alter the style of play, it’s rare for a sports league to invent a completely new game in hopes of delivering a more viewer-friendly product. In esports, however, games can be developed and tweaked after release to provide completely different and potentially more entertaining fan experiences.
“We’re on social (media) all the time,” said Greeley. “We’re in Twitch chat and YouTube chat, and we’re watching the responses coming back from fans. It’s a great day and age when we can have that interaction.”
Though it often takes several years for a community of esports enthusiasts to develop around a particular game, “Valorant” is off to a fast start. According to Riot, the game attracted nearly 3 million daily players during beta testing last year. In May, the game’s first international esports tournament drew in 800,000 viewers on average.
That’s a far cry from the average viewership of 23 million that Riot reported following the 2020 “League of Legends” world championship, but esports organizations say they have been pleased with the momentum building around the company’s new game and the interest from fans so far.
“It’s gone above our expectations,” said John Lewis, director of esports at Team Liquid Enterprises, which placed fourth in the May tournament in Reykjavik, Iceland. “We had our own forecasts of where viewership might be if this was a success, and I think those were smashed pretty quickly.”
Strong relationships
Strong relationships
Lewis said Liquid has developed a strong relationship with Riot through its participation in “League of Legends,” and the organization’s decision to add players and teams competing in Riot’s new titles was nearly automatic.
“We knew they were developing games, and we knew we had to be following very closely,” Lewis said. “We really like our relationship with Riot, and we’d love to develop that further in other titles.”
Jordan Sherman, president and chief commercial officer at Culver City-based Immortals Gaming Club, agreed that Riot’s willingness to work with teams and solicit feedback makes it easier to invest the resources needed to support rosters of professional gamers and to solicit sponsorship agreements around specific titles.
“It always starts with the publisher,” Sherman said. “Having the chance to let them in on our strategy, to let them know how we’re going about the space, to hear from them about what’s upcoming — those types of relationships are absolutely essential.”
Like Liquid, Immortals owns a team in the League Championship Series and since last year has signed teams to participate in “Valorant” and “League of Legends: Wild Rift.” Immortals esports director, Michael Schwartz, said interest from other gaming organizations in “Valorant” was high enough that skilled players were being rostered from the moment the game was released — creating a unique challenge for teams trying to find players likely to succeed in a game they might never have played.
“A lot of teams early on said, ‘We’re just going to pick up “Counter-Strike” players and get some of the known commodities,’” said Schwartz. “The way we look at it is that the person who is going to be the best ‘Valorant’ player is going to be someone who is endemic to that scene, and that person might not be there yet.”
Greeley said it will take time for “Valorant” and other titles to reach the level of success achieved by “League of Legends,” but the company is committed to refining games, tournament structures and broadcasting strategies to build thriving esports infrastructure in which teams can succeed financially.
“We are at a high level committed to ensuring teams have a route to be profitable by being in our ecosystem,” Greeley said.
First and foremost, he added, that means ensuring widespread satisfaction with the company’s esports infrastructure — and that Riot’s games are accessible and, well, fun.
“No matter how good of an esports experience we provide, if the game isn’t compelling, fans won’t care to watch it, and pros won’t care to play it,” Greeley said.
