LoL Esports and the EWC: Inside the media roundtable | RFT.GG
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LoL Esports and the EWC: Inside the media roundtable
Somewhere near the League of Legends Main Stage, LoL Esports' Chris Greeley and the Esports World Cup Foundation's Fabian Scheuermann sat down with the press. Here is everything that was said.
Paris, Karmine Corp and a bet that paid off
The backdrop was an unusual one. The night before, Karmine Corp had knocked T1 out in a venue that was close to boiling over. "I don't know that I've ever seen T1 booed before, it didn't feel malicious, it's so interesting to just see the passion of fans here and the love they have for the team," said Greeley, describing without hostility a fervour he had not seen coming — the drums, the flags, Kameto losing his mind on the cutaways during the closing base race.
Scheuermann set out the frame in the PR register he would hold throughout. For the Foundation, League of Legends ticks every box in the house doctrine: "Best games, best clubs, best players, life changing prizepool." Of the 24 titles on last year's programme, LoL performed the best. Naming Faker as a global ambassador follows an explicit logic — breaking out of the bubble. The Korean and Cristiano Ronaldo are the two faces the Foundation sees as capable of carrying esports into the mainstream.
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A calendar under strain
Teams have gone from MSI to the EWC without a breath, and the competitive fallout is visible. Of every side that played MSI, only made it to the closing stages in Paris. "There were open questions about the impact of this travel schedule," Greeley conceded.
Shortening regional splits to open up windows looks like the obvious fix. Riot refuse to do it, and the reasoning is worth following because it underpins everything else the publisher thinks about the calendar.
Fandom starts in the regional leagues. Karmine Corp didn't come out of nowhere — it got its start in the LFL before moving to the LEC. It's watching your team week after week that builds that connection.
Ultra-short splits would amount to erasing the bottom four or five teams in the standings. Their players would never be seen, never built up, never loved. Riot consider that sacrifice unacceptable.
The tournament SOOP ran in Korea — three days online, between teams on Korean soil who had not qualified for MSI — was deliberately closed to MSI teams. The aim was twofold: give stage time to other players, and above all avoid the knock-on effect. Without that rule, MSI teams would have felt obliged to take part because everyone else was there.
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Merge MSI and the EWC? No, and here is why
From the Foundation's side, a merger would only make sense if "one plus one make three". Right now it does not. The two events generate distinct stories. More to the point, MSI is structurally closed — qualification restrictions, tier 1 teams only — where the EWC sells itself on being open, down to welcoming tier 2 sides.
Greeley settled it with a fact, and it was the most concrete piece of information of the roundtable.
The MSI venues are already booked for 2027.
Riot know where the 2028 edition will be held, and it will not be Riyadh.
He added a personal preference he made no attempt to hide: more tournaments beats fewer. And he was pleased that 2026 had been the practical proof that MSI and the EWC can hold distinct identities.
The EWC qualifiers: the real novelty of the year
This is where Greeley placed the most significant step forward of the 2026 edition — qualifiers played alongside the regional splits, online, with the Champions League as a loose model.
Riot hope those matches replace blocks of scrims rather than players' time off. For Greeley that is a hope and a trade-off, not a certainty.
Scheuermann wants to "double down" on the format, particularly in Europe, where the swings were spectacular. Greeley wants to take it beyond Europe.
Tier 2: the economic problem nobody has solved
Asked how satisfied he was with opening the door to tier 2 teams, and about the prospect of international tier 2 events, Greeley delivered the most analytical passage of the discussion.
Before franchising, promotion and relegation was lucrative. Organisations farmed slots and sold them on for seven figures. Riot shut off that tap, judging it unhealthy for the ecosystem, and refocused tier 2 on developing talent.
But developing talent pays nothing if the contracts cannot be sold on, and the market never covered the investment being made. Tier 2 has therefore become a fully subsidised league. Not sustainable, in practice.
Attracting sponsors there is structurally hard. Why invest in tier 2 when tier 1 offers more visibility for the same euro?
Scheuermann was categorical: "The EWC isn't here to create a year-round schedule and further clutter an already packed calendar." The balance between novelty, player workload and complementarity with publisher circuits comes first. And he accepts the possibility of stepping back: if 2027 or 2028 prove too crowded, reversing course would be "completely acceptable".
The speed of light problem
Asked by one journalist about an esports "Europa League" and about ping in Africa, Greeley laid out the physical constraint that bounds the whole debate. Outside Asia, ping is a wall, and North America is locked in its own bubble — without a plane, there are no new opponents.
Last year's Asian Invitational proved the opposite is possible: LCP, LCK and LPL, entirely online. The threshold Riot regard as the ceiling for pro matches with real competitive stakes is 25 ms.
The other obstacle is human. Pros refuse to play competitions with nothing on the line. That is the lesson of Rift Rivals. LCK against LPL worked, because the stakes were intrinsic — you cannot fake indifference when five Koreans face five Chinese players. Everywhere else, the same question came back: "We're not playing for anything. We're not winning anything. Why are we here?"
Add a bad calendar slot, right before Worlds preparation, with a fourteen-hour flight as the "punishment" for the best teams. Greeley summed up the rule: if the pros think a tournament is stupid, fans check out immediately.
Best-of-1: the Foundation's stated doctrine
Why no best-of-3 at what many see as a major tournament? Scheuermann defended it as a "meta" choice, applied across the whole EWC rather than specific to LoL.
Image Credit: RFT.GG
The keyword is boldness. One shot, no RNG — perform straight away or go home. He admits fans sometimes hate it. But he sees it as complementary to the LoL ecosystem: elsewhere you can follow your team all year; here, new stories get made. "It's something we're fighting for and don't want to change."
Greeley added an operational reading. Across five compressed days with as many teams as possible, there are only three options:
shorten the format
burn teams out on fourteen-hour days
multi-stream
The EWC picked the right two. He pointed out that Riot use best-of-1 in the Swiss stage at Worlds — right up to elimination and qualification matches — precisely because it produces upsets and stories. As for the double elimination some are calling for: the principle, openly stated, is that you do not get to have a bad day.
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How the partnership was built: three years, three steps
Greeley went through the factors that led Riot — historically protective of their competitive ecosystem — to sign for three years.
Year one. A one-year licence, two parties testing each other. Riot wanted to know whether the EWC could present LoL properly to fans. The EWC wanted to know whether Riot were the right partner, whether fans would follow, whether teams would take it seriously.
Team feedback. Riot surveyed every participating team. Without exception, the responses were positive: treatment on site, practice facilities, player areas that let teams cross paths, activities, even the schedule. That feedback fed into internal thinking at Riot about the hospitality they offer pros at their own international events.
Viewership as the arbiter. Reddit and global social platforms surface a vocal minority, which creates the impression that only discontent exists. But when more than a million people watch, China excluded, "one million people didn't tune in just to hate-watch".
The EWC's willingness to act as a laboratory. The EWC offered to test fearless draft with every team at their tournament. Riot said no, but the signal counted. This year the EWC are testing dual stream, a format Riot have barely touched since the LCS and LEC around 2016-2017. The data collected will be used to assess whether it can compress the number of days, or instead widen the tournament. Greeley closed with a joke about the value of a partner willing to take the hits — including a hypothetical "crazy" idea like a single pick in game five, noting live that Scheuermann's face suggested it was out of the question.
Paris: the numbers and the principle of travelling
Photo Credit: Esports Foundation
On the first edition outside the Kingdom, Scheuermann pointed to two KPIs: attendance and viewership.
Viewership. Chinese figures are still pending, but records were already being broken by the semi-finals the night before.
Attendance. The Paris LoL venue doubled or even tripled the Riyadh figures — largely down to capacity constraints at the Saudi site.
Riyadh remains home, but an event called the Esports World Cup has to travel the world. The same logic applies to the Esports Nations Cup: the second edition, in 2028, will also move. Talks over the next EWC host city are under way, though less advanced than for the ENC.
The Esports Nations Cup: Chris Greeley's admission
Scheuermann pointed out that a nations competition has been asked for over a decade. It is also, in his view, the most effective mainstream lever — identifying with France is simpler than identifying with two or three clubs and their specific fanbases.
Image Credit: ENC
Yet no national roster exists, for any game. Everything has to be built, with no testing ground beyond the Asian Games.
Riot's initial scepticism. Greeley described the internal meetings. Building national teams is a colossal undertaking — rules differ from country to country, governing bodies are either multiple or non-existent, there is the right to use the flag, the legitimacy of calling yourself the national team of X. And for what? "Fans will just watch Korea play China. We already do that at the Asian Games."
The turning point was the LEC finals in Montpellier. His European teams had warned him not to miss Friday night and the EMEA Masters, because it would change his perspective. That evening, Spain against France. "The building shook in a way you don't see at some regional finals."
The conclusion his team drew became the thesis: it is not the destination, it is the journey. Greeley, a supporter of the United States men's national football team, illustrated it with his own experience. He was fairly sure the USA would not win the World Cup, but following the run and the rivalries was compelling.
Saudi money: the awkward question
A direct question on Saudi Arabia's reported disengagement from certain sporting ventures, LIV Golf chief among them. Is the commitment to the EWC and the ENC intact?
Scheuermann answered on three levels.
The factual level. The EWC and the ENC sit at the top of the priority list. From an esports standpoint, the investment is unchanged. Paris is the evidence: leaving the Kingdom came with investment maintained, if not increased.
The doctrinal level. He drew the distinction that sits at the heart of his answer: profitability and sustainability are two very different words. The Foundation is a non-profit organisation, so it can invest without expecting a return. The model it claims is that of the Olympic Games. The expected return is not financial but ecosystemic. "Our goal isn't simply to pour money into esports and hope that it somehow translates into results." The ambition is a sport that carries itself — which, he admits without hedging, is not the case today.
The evidence level. The trend on club, player and ecosystem stability is positive. He reached for a formula: the esports winter is over, we are in the esports spring. And above all, an argument from actions: the ENC would never have been created had the investments failed or the targets gone unmet. Building a second ecosystem, a national one, is the answer in itself.
