As one of the three major esports titles in the Tencent Esports ecosystem, the presentation session of TiMi Studio Group’s Honor of Kings attracted the most attention during the Tencent Esports Global Summit.
Allan Zhang, chief brand officer of Honor of Kings and general manager of TiMi Esports Center, announced multiple esports plans during his speech on the main stage:
The $7.74M USD Honor of Kings World Champion Cup (KCC) 2021 will apply a “City Tour” strategy like the League of Legends World Championship. Six Chinese cities – Shanghai, Nanjing, Chongqing, Qingdao, Wuhan, and Beijing – were included in the tour. The grand final of the event will take place in Beijing Olympic Sports Center Stadium on Aug. 28.
The King Pro League (KPL) will have three esports teams connected to Chinese cities and renamed. KPL teams Royal Never Give-Up Mobile (RNG.M), Top Esports (TES), and KS Gaming (KSG) will bond with the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Changsha, and Suzhou, respectively. KSG is owned by Chinese short-film company Kuaishou, it will be renamed Suzhou KSG. In the same way, Shanghai RNG.M, and Changsha TES. Zhang said that Edward Gaming Mobile (EDG.M) also bonded with Shanghai, which means the team and RNG.M are placed in a “Local Derby” position.
The Honor of Kings Winter Champion Cup has rebranded to Honor of Kings Challenger Cup, and will become the first esports competition to be hosted at the end of the year, in Hangzhou Esports Center, the official esports venue of 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.
KPL teams All Gamers (AG), WE will have their home venue in Chengdu Gaoxin District and Xi’an Qujiang District, respectively. Zhang revealed that the AG home venue will be also close to Tencent Chengdu headquarters.
Before the announcement, 11 KPL teams already have bonded with 11 Chinese top cities, and six of them already have their own home venue.
Tencent has teamed up with China Culture Management Association Esports Committee to host the Honor of Kings Women’s Open. This open will begin in H2 2021, but it is not clear how it will connect to KPL.
Apart from the general esports plans, Jackie Huang, general manager of TiMi L1 Studio and executive producer of Honor of Kings, also revealed that the studio has developed a new intellectualized system for third-party organizers to host Honor of Kings competitions. The system applied artificial intelligence technologies, which can automatically provide esports production, poster, comments, highlights, and even automatically shoutcast the game. Huang showcased a video about how the AI shoutcasting technology applied in a normal Honor of Kings match at the main stage of the summit. Huang stated that the system will lower the threshold of tournament organizing for third-party organizers.
