2016 League of Legends World Championship

Background, teams, and qualifications

After the 2015 League of Legends World Championship was held across Europe, the 2016 edition was held in North America.

On October 28, Riot Games announced that the prize pool had grown to over $5 million, on the strength of selling unique Championship skins for hero characters in the game. The original prize pool was $2.13 million contributed by Riot Games, and the final amount will be calculated after fan contributions stop on November 6. The $5.07 million prize pool as of October 28 is the largest single prize pool in League of Legends history. Riot announced that 40% of the prize pool will be awarded to the winner and 15% to the second place. The final prize pool reached $6.7 million.

To encourage new viewers to watch, Riot Games set up a second stream specifically for new viewers.

Sixteen teams qualified for the tournament from regional events. EDward Gaming, Royal Never Give Up, and IMay from qualified from the League of Legends Pro League in China. G2 Esports, H2K-Gaming, and Splyce qualified via the 2016 Summer European League of Legends Championship Series. Team SoloMid, Counter Logic Gaming, and Cloud9 qualified via the 2016 Summer North American League of Legends Championship Series. ROX Tigers, SK Telecom T1, and Samsung Galaxy qualified from the League of Legends Champions Korea event. Flash Wolves and Ahq e-Sports Club qualified from the League of Legends Master Series for the Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau region. INTZ eSports from Brazil and Albus NoX Luna from Russia qualified via international wildcard qualifications.

Rosters

*Tong "Koro1" Yang replaced Chen "Mouse" Yu-Hao after the latter retired from the tournament due to a private issue.

Venues

Four venues in four cities were selected for the tournament.

Group stage

The group stage was held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California. 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. Tiebreaking matches were played in groups A and C.

Group A

The Cinderella story of the tournament was the run of Albus NoX Luna, the CIS champions who became the first wildcard team to make it to the quarterfinals in the history of the League of Legends World Championship. European first seed G2 Esports underperformed in this group, while ROX Tigers, the first seed from Korea, won the group as expected, but had to do so by defeating Albus NoX Luna in a tiebreaker game.

Group B

Group B's deciding matches all occurred on the last day, when all teams except for the Korean first seed SK Telecom T1 had 2–3 records. In the end, it was Cloud9, the sole North American team to move on, that moved on after exploiting the inconsistent play of the Chinese and Taiwanese teams. I May was also hurt when one of its players was suspended for one match on the last day and fined $2000 for abusive behavior in online games. During Cloud 9's match against Flash Wolves, Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi killed 690 minions, which set a new record for this stat at worlds.

Group C

Group C was the only group without a Korean team seeded first. Its two qualifiers were both considered championship favorites, since H2K-Gaming was the only Western first seed and EDward Gaming was a strong Chinese team. Despite a 1–2 showing in the first week, H2K managed to make the quarterfinals at the top of its group by winning four straight matches, including a tiebreaker against EDWard Gaming, to become the only European team to move on.

Group D

Group D was considered to be the group of death because it had three top Korean, Chinese, and North American teams, and a strong European team. Samsung Galaxy, would convincingly win the group with help from the strong play of Kang "Ambition" Chang-yong. Royal Never Give Up defeated the North American champions TSM to even their records at 3–3 and win the head-to-head tiebreaker to move on to the quarterfinals.

Quarterfinals

The quarterfinals were held at the Chicago Theatre, starting on October 13. All three of the Korean teams, SK Telecom T1, ROX Tigers, and Samsung Galaxy, advanced to the quarterfinals from the group stage. Two Chinese teams, EDward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up, advanced by finishing second in their groups. Cloud9 and H2k-Gaming were respectively the only North American and European teams to advance out of groups. The last team to make it to the quarterfinals was Albus NoX Luna, a Russian wildcard team that finished second in its group.

Semi-finals

Three teams from the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) circuit and one from the European League of Legends Championship Series (EULCS) made it to the semi-finals. H2K-Gaming ended the wildcard run of Albus NoX by sweeping them 3–0 in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, the three Korean teams ended the runs of EDward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up, the last two Chinese teams and the run of Cloud 9, the last North American team.

The semi-finals were held at Madison Square Garden in New York over two days. SK Telecom T1 won a five-game series against the ROX Tigers, who had won the 2015 Summer League of Legends Championship Korea season and were favorites to win this event. Many commentators called this matchup the true World Finals. In the other semi-finals, Samsung Galaxy swept H2k-Gaming, the last European team in the tournament, 3–0 to advance to the finals.

Finals

The final lasted six hours and was played in front of a crowd of nearly 20,000 fans at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. A projection of the minimap which showed each team's map control was shown on the floor of the arena between the two teams. Most of the players for Samsung Galaxy (SSG) had never played in the finals before, while most members of SK Telecom (SKT) were returning members of the 2015 championship team. It was the first finals series in a League of Legends world championship to go the full five games.

The first match of the best of five series lasted 40 minutes and was won by SK Telecom, who were able to attack Samsung Galaxy's undefended base after winning a big "all-in" battle between the two teams. The second match was also won by SKT, who was able to continuously build up an insurmountable advantage after winning a battle in the mid-game, ending the game after 31 minutes.

After losing the first two games, Samsung Galaxy won a long third game against SK Telecom. SKT dominated the early stages of the game and built up a lead in both kills and gold. The turning point in this game was a fight over Baron, an important in-game objective, where Samsung Galaxy was able to kill half of SK Telecom's team and destroy two of their turrets afterwards. After a similar engagement later in the game over Baron which Samsung Galaxy also won, they were then able to quickly destroy five of SKT's defensive towers and win the game. This third game was the second-longest in competitive League of Legends history, clocking in at 71:20.

Samsung Galaxy then won the fourth game, also after winning a key fight over Baron. Despite losing two inhibitor buildings in their base, SKT was able to stall SSG with defensive play until the 42-minute mark, after which SSG took three Dragons – another in game objective – uncontested and gained buffs that allowed them to win the game. In the final game, SK Telecom played a more cautious gameplay style and punished Samsung Galaxy's riskier play. SKT was able to grab two Baron kills and two Elder Dragon kills en route to winning the final game.

SK Telecom's team shared a $2 million prize purse between its members. The championship victory was SKT's third in four years, and a successful defence of their 2015 title. SKT also became the first team to win three world championships. ESPN's Timothy Lee called the finals "an instant classic." SKT's Lee Sang-hyeok, who uses the handle "Faker", was named as the tournament MVP. It was Faker's first Worlds MVP. Faker's performance on the map's middle lane broke the previous 208 kills record at Worlds by the third map of the finals, and he ended up with 217 kills.

Bracket

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Final standings

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Legacy

Viewership numbers were higher than those for the 2015 League of Legends World Championship. 43 million unique viewers saw the finals and peak concurrent viewership for the finals was 14.7 million. 370 million hours of esports were streamed over the course of the entire world championship. The final prize pool, which included fan contributions via purchase of in-game items, was worth $6.7 million. The total cumulative daily unique impressions (the amount of unique viewers that tuned in every day via online and television channels) reached 396 millions.

LA 2024, which is overseeing the Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics was inspired by the success of this edition of League of Legends Worlds to plan and include esports in the Olympics games if they win the bid. Casey Wasserman, the chairman of LA 2024, suggested using technology used in certain segments of League of Legends Worlds such as augmented reality and virtual reality to make the Olympic more accessible to a younger demographic.