United Center hosts over 20,000 League of Legends Fans for the Championship Series
Chicago, IL — This weekend the United Center experienced one of its biggest crowds for an esports event. Over 20,000 League of Legends (LoL) fans from all over the world filled the United Center to watch the 2022 Championship between Cloud9 and 100 Thieves.
Launched in 2009, League of Legends is an online multiplayer online battle arena video game published by game developer Riot Games. This free PC game has 180 million players as of 2022 and a million users hourly making it the most popular game in the world. The tournament rules are as follows, best three out of 5 round wins, each round can last 20 mins or more, and consists of five players on each side. With over 160 playable characters to choose from, each character has its own strengths and weaknesses. It’s an extremely strategic game that thrives on teamwork.
Established in 2013, Cloud9 is an esports team based in Los Angeles, California that competes in the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS). Within their first two years as a team, they won LCS in 2013 and 2014. This is the longest winning streak in the history of LCS.
LCS is a top-level professional League of Legends competition that amasses viewership in the hundreds of thousands. Every year this North American tournament receives monumental views. This year’s peak viewership is 827,000. The top eight qualifying teams participate in a double elimination bracket for the Summer season. Then the top three teams from that season go on to compete at the final League of Legends World Championship.
100 Thieves is another LoL esports team established in 2017. 100 Thieves competes in many other esports like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Valorant. In 2018 is when 100 Thieves started competing in LCS and won their first championship in 2021.
The 100 Thieves are back again at LCS Championship and the only thing standing in their way is Cloud9. In the Summer season 2022 bracket, 100 Thieves worked their way through Team Liquid but got knocked into the lower bracket by Cloud9. After fighting their way through another team, Evil Genius, 100 Thieves they bested them 3–2 giving them s another chance to dominate over Cloud9.
The first round goes to 27 mins and Cloud9 clinches the first win, 13–3. The second round we see a little more pushback from 100 Thieves tying up the match at 5–5 but to no avail, Cloud9 rocks them — in under 30mins 22–6. The third round was the last chance of hope for 100 Thieves. They could not hold on to a win 23–11, in favor of Cloud9.
We see Kim “Berserker” Min-cheol from Cloud9 doing 38% damage, a career high for him. The highest we’ve seen is 32% in the history of the series which earned him the Player of the Week.
Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami giving his teammate praise said,
“Berserk is the best performer out of the entire team.”
This great maneuver led Cloud9 to end the third round in under 30 mins and secure the championship 23–11.
A few things to note about Cloud9’s amazing performance, their roster became complete in May 2022. This team hasn’t been playing together too long and still managed to have synergy. A few members have played together before like Nicolaj “Jensen” and Robert “Blaber” Huang in the early days of Cloud9. During this series, no team has been able to gain a 3–0 sweep except Cloud9.
Both teams are exceptionally great and recognize that the road to getting the championship wasn’t going to be easy.
“… I thought it was kind of anyone[’s] season…,” said Jensen when asked about his feelings on how the season went. “But yeah, I felt like this time there were a lot of good teams, so it was very fun because you didn’t know who was going to win…just depends on the match”
Bok “Reapered” Han-gyu, head coach for 100 Thieves LoL team had this to say about the competition,
“They [Cloud9] were playing a little bit smarter than us. If there is something we’re lacking in the series, it’s a little bit of the smartness.”
Can “Closer” Çelik follows up with,
“I gave [it] my all I make sure I’m putting my all and working all I can to make sure you got your teammates back.”
What an incredible season it’s been for LoL and fans and it still isn’t over yet! As these team head on to the League of Legends Worlds Championship where North American and international teams compete for the world championship title.
