Mentioned in this article
League/Tournament Brands:
- The League of Legends European Championship (LEC) has chosen Budapest, Hungary, and Malmö, Sweden, for its Spring and Summer finals events.
- Both are first-time cities for the league; this is the LEC’s first event in Hungary, while Malmö has played host to several DreamHack Counter-Strike tournaments.
- Riot Games invited cities to bid as finals hosts last year, and is currently evaluating proposals for 2022.
Riot Games has revealed the host cities for its LEC finals roadshow events this year. The Spring Split will take the league to Budapest, Hungary (location TBA), while the Summer finals will take place in the Malmö Arena in Sweden.
Although this is the first LEC event in Hungary, the Eastern European country is a developing hub for esports; Budapest was host to the V4 Future Sports Festival last year, which included a €300K EUR ($330K USD) prize pool Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. The DreamHack festival in Jönköping, Sweden, was the location of the very first League of Legends World Championship in 2011, while Malmö itself has hosted multiple DreamHack CS:GO tournaments.
Last year, Riot Games EU began a process of working directly with major European cities to host its finals events. In a press presentation prior to the 2020 LEC season launch, head of esports Alberto Guerrero confirmed that 2022 location bids are currently being evaluated.
Jose Tramullas, head of esports production for Riot Games EU told The Esports Observer that the company evaluates both the incentives in terms of production costs, and leverage from cities. “One thing that we realized very early is that when you decide to go somewhere but you’re not partnering with the city itself, a lot of things that might make it a better experience are difficult to accomplish,” he said, referring to the 2019 World Championships’ use of the Eiffel Tower and other Parisian landmarks to promote the event.
“It’s not just about making our production more sustainable long term, but also about improving the experience of what we can do in collaboration with these cities.”
