The 2014 ''League of Legends'' World Championship was an

esports Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although orga ...

tournament held from September 18 to October 19, 2014, for the

multiplayer online battle arena Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete against each other on a predefined battlefield. Each player controls a single character with a set of distinctive abilities that im ...

video game ''

League of Legends ''League of Legends'' (''LoL''), commonly referred to as ''League'', is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by ''Defense of the Ancients'', a Mod (video games), custom map for War ...

''. It was the fourth iteration of the ''League of Legends'' World Championship, an annual international tournament organized by the game's developer,

Riot Games Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop ''League of Legends'' and went on t ...

. Matches were held in

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Busan Busan (), officially known as is South Korea's most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.4 million inhabitants. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economic, cultural and educational center of southeastern South Korea, w ...

, and

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

, with grand finals being at the

Seoul World Cup Stadium The Seoul World Cup Stadium (), also known as Sangam Stadium, is a stadium used mostly for association football matches. The venue is located in 240, World Cup-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea. It was built for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and opene ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. The 16 teams qualified by either winning a major professional league or a regional qualifying tournament. There was a 16 team round-robin group stage followed by an 8 team

single elimination A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

bracket. The games were officially streamed on

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...

and Azubu in several languages and the finals were aired online on

ESPN3 ESPN3 (formerly ESPN360 and ESPN3.com) is an online streaming service owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which operates the network, through its 80% controlling ownership interest) and Hearst Communications ...

. The group stage began September 18 in

at the National Taiwan University Sports Center and concluded September 28 in

at the

Singapore EXPO Singapore EXPO is the largest convention and exhibition venue in Singapore with over 100,000 square metres of column-free, indoor space spread over 10 halls. The center was designed by Cox Richardson Rayner, built by PSA International, and funded ...

with eight teams advancing to the bracket stage. The bracket stage started on October 3 in

, South Korea at the

Busan Exhibition and Convention Center Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, commonly known as BEXCO (), is a convention and exhibition center located in Centum City, Haeundae-gu, Busan, South Korea. It features over 46,500 m2 of exhibition space and 53 meeting rooms. In June 2012, ...

, and concluded on October 19 with the grand finals hosted at the 45,000-seats

, where South Korean team Samsung Galaxy White beat the Chinese team

Star Horn Royal Club Royal Club ( zh, s=皇族俱乐部) is a Chinese professional ''League of Legends'' team that competes in the League of Legends Development League (LDL), the second highest level of competitive ''League of Legends'' in China. The team was founde ...

to become the 2014 League of Legends world champions. American band

Imagine Dragons Imagine Dragons is an American pop rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada, consisting of lead singer Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman. The band first gained exposure with the release of their sing ...

contributed the theme song "

Warriors A warrior is a person specializing in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based warrior culture society that recognizes a separate warrior aristocracies, class, or caste. History Warriors seem to have be ...

" for the tournament, and performed live on the grand finals stage in South Korea. All games were made available for free via live streaming. The 2014 World Championship games were streamed live by 40 broadcast partners, and cast in 19 languages. The grand finals were watched by 27 million people, with concurrent viewership peaking at over 11 million viewers.

Teams

The following teams qualified to participate in the tournament's group stage:

Venues

and

were the 4 venues chosen to host the competition.

Group stage

The group stage was played in a best of one double round-robin format, with the top two teams from each of the four groups advancing to the knockout stage, for a total of eight teams.

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Knockout stage

Final standings

Viewership and attendance

Around 40,000 fans attended the grand finals between Samsung White and

. It is estimated that there were 288 million cumulative views throughout the entire tournament. The 2014 World Championship games were streamed live by 40 broadcast partners, and cast in 19 languages. The grand finals were watched by 27 million people, with concurrent viewership peaking at over 11 million viewers.

Racism incident

Prior to the World Championship group stage in Taipei,

SK Gaming SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in ''Counter-Strike'' (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian ''CS'' team won ...

's Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen acted in a racially insensitive way while playing on the Taiwanese server, being disrespectful towards other players and naming his account "Taipei ChingChong". Johnsen was fined US$2,500 and was suspended from his team's first three games in the tournament.

References

External links

Information
{{Professional League of Legends competition League of Legends World Championship, 2014 League of Legends World Championship, 2014 League of Legends World Championship, 2014 League of Legends World Championship, 2014

League of Legends World Championship The ''League of Legends'' World Championship (commonly abbreviated as Worlds) is the annual professional ''League of Legends'' world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games and is the culmination of each season. Teams compete for the champ ...

League of Legends World Championship Racism in sport 2010s in Seoul 2014 in South Korea 2014 multiplayer online battle arena tournaments