In 2023, the League of Legends World Championship, which took place in the United States and Mexico, had a prize pool of just under 2.23 million U.S. dollars. This marked a significant drop on the prize pool of 6.45 million U.S. dollars in 2018. The total winnings from the tournament in 2018 were the largest on record since 2012, with the cumulative prize money totaling slightly above two million U.S. dollars annually since 2019.League of Legends is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that pits opposing teams against each other to infiltrate their opponents’ base and destroy their “nexus”, a fortified structure within the base.
Who are the most prominent League of Legends players worldwide?
Looking at professional gamers, Sang Hyeok Lee was the highest-earning League of Legends player worldwide in 2024. Hailing from South Korea, Lee, who played under the moniker of Faker, had earned more than 1.5 million U.S. dollars competing at League of Legends tournaments throughout his eSports gaming career. Meanwhile, k4sen was the most watched League of Legends streamer on Twitch worldwide, having accumulated more than 3.3 million viewership hours in the 30 days preceding January 2024. The Japanese League of Legends streamer’s monthly viewership hours were about 10 percent higher than NoWay4u_Sir, who was second in the ranking.
How popular are MOBA games?
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games are a widely played subgenre of strategy games which enable teams of players to compete against one another on a predetermined battlefield. Although they were not the first games within the genre, MOBA was popularized with titles such as League of Legends and Dota 2. In 2023, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang was the most downloaded MOBA mobile gaming app worldwide, registering more than five million downloads throughout the year. Meanwhile, Honor of Kings was the top grossing mobile MOBA app worldwide, reporting an annual revenue of above 103 million U.S. dollars in November 2023.
