Riot Games announce Wild Rift esports plans for Southeast Asia in 2021
Riot Games has announced their plans for League of Legends: Wild Rift’s esports scene in Southeast Asia, which includes professional and collegiate circuits in seven countries in the region.
In a release on Monday (14 December), Riot said Wild Rift’s esports scene in Southeast Asia will kick off with a number of smaller events from January through March “to give viewers a taste of the budding talent and teams in the region”.
This will then be followed by a transition into eight location-specific tournament circuits, where teams will be competing for the title of local champion. Once local champions have been crowned, they will then compete against other local champions across Southeast Asia.
In addition to professional circuits, Riot will also be accommodating collegiate circuits with universities and educational institutions across the region “to create exciting tournaments that will give students a taste of top tier competition”.
”We knew that players were eager and ready for Wild Rift competition. In 2021, we’re focusing on laying the foundations of our long-term commitment to Wild Rift esports in Southeast Asia,” said Chris Tran, Head of Esports at Riot Games Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong in a statement.
Professional and collegiate leagues
According to Riot, organisers PGL and Eliphant (the founders of GameStart) will be working on both the professional and collegiate leagues in Singapore.
Meanwhile, Mineski Philippines will organise the professional league in the Philippines. Along with AcadArena, which notably introduced the first full-fledged esports scholarship in the country, they will organise two separate collegiate circuits in the Philippines.
ESL will accommodate the professional circuits in Malaysia and Thailand as well as the latter’s collegiate circuit. Malaysia’s collegiate circuit will be handled by the Gaming Company.
Both the professional and collegiate circuits in Indonesia and Vietnam will be under ONE Up and VNG, respectively.
Finally, Taiwan’s professional circuit will be hosted by Cyber Games Arena while its collegiate circuit will be under Taiwan Mobile and Bowl Cut Entertainment.
“We’re looking forward to delivering memorable experiences alongside the region’s top esports organizations over the course of the year,” said Tran.
Wild Rift is the official mobile port for League of Legends and has been quickly gaining prevalence in Southeast Asia despite still being in an open beta phase.
Southeast Asia was notably the first region given access to Wild Rift, as it was released there in late October.
Meanwhile, Europe, the CIS, the Middle East, and Turkey were only able to get Wild Rift earlier this month. The Americas and India will have to wait a bit longer, however, as the game’s release for those regions were delayed to next year by the coronavirus pandemic.
With Wild Rift’s esports scene ramping up for next year, more and more esports organisations across the world have announced plans to enter the the game’s competitive scene, including top European org Team Secret.
For more esports news updates, visit https://yhoo.it/YahooEsportsSEA and check out Yahoo Esports Southeast Asia’s Facebook page.
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