League of Legends released in 2009, and after two years, it had built a strong community of players around its free-to-play model.

However, the game lacked a full competitive experience until the introduction of ranked play and draft mode in mid-2010.

Initially, only a handful of people at Riot believed in the future of competitive play, but as data suggested a growing viewership, the company decided to test the competitive landscape, organizing the first World Championship tournament in 2011, hosted by DreamHack in Jönköping, Sweden.

[3] Eight teams qualified for the World Championship: three from North America, three from Europe, one from Singapore, and one from the Philippines.

[5] Source: League of Legends (Archived 2013-01-11 at the Wayback Machine) Source: League of Legends (Archived 2013-01-11 at the Wayback Machine) The Season One World Championship accumulated over 1.6 million viewers and peaked at 210,000 concurrent viewers.