League of Legends quarter-finals @ 2026 eSports World Cup in Paris

 

There's another World Cup going on after FIFA is over, and this one is closer and more accessible in terms of pricing. I was going to blend this with the FIFA World Cup post I published yesterday, but then figured it would take longer, so they're separate though I'll probably refer to a couple of points from yesterday's post.

I'm interested in everything to do with play and games, as well as passionate subcultures, so when I heard the eSports World Cup was suddenly relocating from Saudi Arabia (I believe it was created there, and Qiddiya – city of play – branding appears all around) to Paris, I had to take a look at what was going on.

From what I hear, one of the particularities of the event is that it features many of the most played competitive games, from first person shooters (FPS), to fighting games, MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, like League of Legends), even ones published by competitors that don't tend to appear in the same event – and chess; to promote chess.com one might presume (Magnus Carlsen will be playing, and it's streaming live for free from 11th to 15th August).

The €20 ticket price also made it fairly easy to choose going. It is actually many competitive gaming events over the course of six weeks, which also made me wonder who they called and how much it might have cost them to suddenly relocate the event to the largest event hall in Paris for a whole six weeks, even though French people take holidays, I can't imagine the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles was sitting empty all summer waiting for them to call. I joked that Saudi Arabia might have thrown in some oil deal or added a couple of extra Mirage fighter jets to an order to secure the venue.

I've been slowly learning more about League of Legends, as one of the most followed competitive games, that fills stadiums, and that has become a streaming show sensation with the popular Arcane animated series on Netflix (it's excellent, and you don't need to know anything about the video game). While intimidating in terms of complexity, it seemed like a game I could follow with regards to its roots.

I played a lot of RTS (real time strategy) games way back when, even though I was never the best at them, I loved Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, Cossacks, Warcraft II, III, and Starcraft 1/2. I even got into occasionally watching competitive Starcraft 2. I understood how the game played, and appreciated the level of skill, and unbelievable actions per minute (APM) speed the top players reached.

Just for a quick summary; Warcraft III offered the ability for players to create custom maps and game rules, which people did, and one of them was an arena with two teams squaring off. That was called DOTA (Defence of the Ancients), and the 5v5 team multiplayer online battle arena was born officially with DOTA2. Then Riot Games took that recipe and made it into the sensation that League of Legends still is today. 

I had watched a couple of videos going over the main rules, the play arena / map, and roles of the five teammates. I knew there were over 170 different hero characters to choose from, each with their own specialties and special powers, which was and still is one of barriers to appreciate watching competitive gamers. The other barrier I could foresee was that I'd watched a couple of videos where the battle rages, the commentators (casters, in esports lingo) and fans are going wild, and those moments just look like a confusing colorful kaleidoscope of special effects on the screen. 

Thankfully most moments aren't like that over the course of the roughly 30 minutes play time for a round, and the eSports World Cup was set as a best of three.

The two winning teams I saw and who faced off in the semi-finals the following day are worth mentioning: 

• T1, jointly owned and operated by South Korea Telecom and Comcast Spectacor, and featuring Faker, the best player in the world and a proper celebrity in South Korea. He had many fans who had traveled from far away to cheer for him.
• Karmin Corp, the only French team in the competition, co-founded and co-owned by popular French streamer, Kamet0 (it was created as Kameto Corp). They had home team advantage, and they are known for fostering a loud and cheery army of fans, inspired by football supporter associations.

In the post I wrote yesterday about appreciating football, I mentioned that anything can happen in an exciting way, and it can probably be extended to all spectator sports, or at least to sSports and League of Legends. The other point about the enjoyment of watching people extremely skilled at something you might have tried a few times or even practice regularly, like kicking a ball or playing video games, can be enticing. 

It's often called "competence porn" as coined by screenwriter John Waters in reference to the enjoyment of watching people particularly skilled at whatever it is they do, and dramatised in TV series and movies like Moneyball, Ocean's Eleven, The Pitt, and I think competitive sports athletes as well.

When it comes to League of Legends, and any other complex sport or game, it takes knowing how it's played to really appreciate. I knew I'd be a fish out of water at the eSports World Cup and that was part of the draw for me too. I knew just enough to begin appreciating, just about enough to follow most of the game, and it made me want to learn more. Though to be honest, it also went over my head enough that I blinked a few times and my brain just stopped registering during the most heated moments of the games.

It was fun to experience the different arenas, fans cheering, fast-talking commentators (thanks to them, I was able to generally follow what was going on), and overall atmosphere. 

The sheer difference in numbers and money earned by players is impressive. The eSports World Cup boasted $70 Million in prize money across all games in the competition, and $2 Million for League of Legends. Definitely nothing to sneer at, large mounts of money. 

However, compared with just a quick average from the UK Premier League, the average pro football player will be earning about £4 Million per year, and combining the wages bill across the 20 clubs in the UK Premier League represents roughly £2.25 billion.

Still, eSports is beginning to attract large crowds who are willing to 100 Euros on team jerseys, pretty much the same high prices as other sports jerseys. While the number of fans is not as high as in football, their energy and enthusiasm from the crowd seems comparable. 

The 2026 FIFA World Cup

Yesterday was my birthday and the final of the FIFA football World Cup (or soccer). For once this year, I didn't feel super inspired to organize something to celebrate my birthday, and while I'm happy Spain won (my grandparents were Spanish), watching the game was boring enough to not feel like such a celebration.

By an interesting set of random circumstances, I'd never watched so much football in my life. 

I happened to be traveling in the US to visit my in-laws, my baby son fell ill, a heatwave, and there I was watching football with my brother in law. I started following around the end of the group stage and I kind of got hooked. I rarely follow much football aside from the World Cup but usually towards the end of the competition, and even then not necessarily every time. 

Now it's over I'm trying to remember why I became so interested in it. My younger brother was and always has been into football. It was convenient to be on the same time zone. It was too hot outside to do much at the times the games were happening (except for the players themselves if the stadium wasn't an AC covered dome). Perhaps for Americans appreciative of spectator team sports, it was an acceptable way to spend time.

Or more accurately, for some reason I started seeing what millions of other football fans see and I suppose why they follow, and spend time and often a lot of money on football (tickets and jerseys for example), even though it is also touted as the beautiful game in part because of how cheap and accessible it is for everyone, anywhere in the world. All you need is a ball, or as I've seen kids play with in Tanzania many years ago, a bunch of used plastic bags tied with strings.

On that note, there were some excellent teams representing Africa. I really enjoyed watching the Ivory Coast, Morocco, Egypt, and Cape Verde play.

I'm digressing, here is what I saw and started enjoying in football:

Anything can happen in a truly exciting way. Most of the time there are few goals, so every one of them is a big event, and they can happen until the very last second. Conversely, the opposite can also happen, sometimes there is little action, players kicking the ball back and forth and it becomes kind of boring to watch. Like the final last night.

Players are consumed athletes. Their skills with the ball are impressive and it's inspiring to watch their ball  tricks, dribbles, accelerations, kicks, headers, etc. They spend enormous amounts of efforts running up and down a big pitch, it's obviously dynamic. Sometimes it gets pretty rough, physical, and dramatic too – which can also be its own form of fun (possibly with a dash of schadenfreude).

Technically the World Cup should be, and I guess really is, a moment for patriotic nationalistic pride. I did support France. That said given I have multiple ties, I'm also happy to support Spain, the Netherlands (my father was Dutch), and the USA (where I was born). However, I've found the first two points to overtake supporting any one team most of the time. I'd be making excited noises whoever was making an interesting play towards the goal, well, because it was an interesting play. I like to watch fun football. I didn't support Paraguay much against France in the quarter-finals though. They just came across as a bunch of mean bullies.

Still, the day after France was defeated by Spain in the semi-finals, I realized I was sadder than I thought at the end of game. Most people I talked to were equally baffled. It did feel like something had happened to them to go from the competition favorites to being beaten, first in spirit during that game (maybe?) and with two goals against them. I felt deflated, and again watching England lose to Argentina the following day (I lived in England for many years, and they had a great team in this competition).

I eyed the game for the third place from afar, just checking the score, I had other plans. It seemed it was quite the event with ten goals scored, though not what I'd have hoped for France.

I turned the final game on with fairly low levels of enthusiasm. Maybe I'd already saturated on football, but I wanted to see the whole competition I now felt committed to. It was long and slow, those games can happen to, and the tough point is when you know the situation can completely change within a few seconds, the choice to keep watching or stop and miss out on the action can be a tough one. 

Maybe that's the final piece of turning someone into a football fan, the fear of missing out. That probably only works if you take the team supporting seriously, and I don't all that much. I'm happy to know I can appreciate and talk about football, and I'm equally happy to take a long break and not watch any for a long while now.