The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) announced that it will host the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) at Jamsil Gymnasium on Sat, Apr. 8, and Sun, Apr. 9. Serving as a direct route to qualification for the annual League of Legends World Championship (Worlds), the city decided to co-host the event to support the growth of Korea’s esports industry.
The LCK is the primary competition for League of Legends esports in Korea, a popular game with an average of 100 million monthly users. This year’s competition will feature three teams and is expected to see over 20,000 audience viewers. For two days, the event will be live-streamed worldwide in seven languages: Korean, English, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Japanese. In 2022, the match recorded a peak simultaneous viewership of 5.17 million.
Winning teams of the LCK will be able to secure advantageous positions at the Worlds, the crowning event of League of Legends esports for the year, which has been hosted by Riot Games since 2011. Korea took its seventh championship title at the 2022 Worlds, held at the Chase Center in San Francisco, where two Korean teams from the LCK faced each other at the finals and DRX emerged victorious over T1.
The 2023 LCK Spring Season marks the grand return of the LCK to Seoul at Jamsil Gymnasium after a four-year hiatus since 2019. Thus, the city is making every effort to oversee venue safety for the 20,000 esports fans expected to show up. Also, the city will work with the LCK to operate an esports cultural tour program on the day of the event, participated by ten companies supported by the Seoul Game Contents Center, for visitors to enjoy promotional spaces and gameplay experience booths.
Seoul is providing one-stop support from video game production to commercialization for the development of esports and the video game industry, which are considered promising future-oriented industries, and plans to expand its support for the overseas expansion of small and medium-sized video game companies in the future, including support for participation in overseas markets.
Source: Seoul Metropolitan Government
