League of Legends: Season 3 World Championship

The Season 3 World Championship was an esports tournament for the multiplayer online battle arena video game League of Legends. It was the third iteration of the League of Legends World Championship held by Riot Games, and the last iteration not to be formally titled after the year it took place.

Season 3 World Championship

2013
Tournament information
Location	United States
Dates	September 15–October 4
Administrator	Riot Games
Tournament format(s)	10 team round-robin group stage 8 team single-elimination bracket
Venue(s)	3 (in 1 host city)
Teams	14
Purse	$2,050,000
Final positions
Champions	SK Telecom T1
Runner-up	Royal Club
Tournament statistics
Matches played	63
← 2012 2014 →

SK Telecom T1 defeated Royal Club 3–0 in the finals and took their first championship.

Teams

• 14 teams participate
• Four teams receive direct entry into Quarter-finals through top 4 of All-Star Shanghai 2013.
  • Seed #1 from China, South Korea, North America, and Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau^[1]

Region	Path	Team	ID
Starting in the Playoff stage
China	China Regional Finals Winner	Royal Club	RYL
North America	NA LCS Summer Champion	Cloud9	C9
South Korea	The Champion Most Circuit Points #1	NaJin Black Sword	NJS
TW/HK/MO	TW/HK/MO Regional Finals Winner	Gamania Bears	GAB
Starting in the Group stage
China	China Regional Finals Runner-up	Oh My God	OMG
Europe	EU LCS Summer Champion	Fnatic	FNC
	EU LCS Summer Runner-up	Lemondogs	LD
	EU LCS Summer 3rd Place	Gambit Gaming	GMB
North America	NA LCS Summer Runner-up	Team SoloMid	TSM
	NA LCS Summer 3rd Place	Team Vulcun	VUL
South Korea	The Champion Most Circuit Points #2	Samsung Ozone	SSO
	Korea Regional Finals Winner	SK Telecom T1 K	SKT
Southeast Asia	SEA Regional Finals Winner	Mineski	MSK
CIS►Wildcard	Regional CIS Championship ►IWCT Winner	GamingGear.EU	GG

Venues

Culver City and Los Angeles were selected as the host cities for the World Championship.^[2]

United States
Culver City, California	Los Angeles, California
Group Stage and Quarterfinals	Semifinals	Finals
Culver Sound Studios	Galen Center	Staples Center
Capacity: 1,500	Capacity: 10,258	Capacity: 20,000
Culver City Los Angeles

Group stage

• Ten teams are drawn into two groups with five teams in each group based on their seeding. Teams of the same region cannot be placed in the same group (excepted seed #3 of Europe is Gambit Gaming).
• Double round robin, all matches are best-of-one.
• If teams have the same win–loss record and head-to-head record, a tiebreaker match is played for second place.
• Top two teams of each group will advance to Playoff stage. Bottom three teams are eliminated.

Pos	Team	Pld	W	L	PCT	Qualification
1	Oh My God	8	7	1	.875	Advance to knockouts
2	SK Telecom T1 K	8	7	1	.875
3	Lemondogs	8	3	5	.375
4	Team SoloMid	8	2	6	.250
5	GamingGear.eu	8	1	7	.125

Group A

Source: LoL Esports (Archived 2014-10-07 at the Wayback Machine)

Pos	Team	Pld	W	L	PCT	Qualification
1	Fnatic	8	7	1	.875	Advance to knockouts
2	Gambit Gaming	9	6	3	.667
3	Samsung Ozone	9	5	4	.556
4	Team Vulcan	8	3	5	.375
5	Team Mineski	8	0	8	.000

Group B

Source: LoL Esports (Archived 2014-10-07 at the Wayback Machine)

Playoff stage

Broadcast desk during the playoffs

• Eight teams are drawn into a single elimination bracket.
• Quarterfinals matches are best-of-three, Semifinals and Final match are best-of-five.
• The auto-qualified team is drawn against the team from Group stage.
• Teams from same group will be on opposite sides of the bracket, meaning they cannot play each other until the Finals.

Quarterfinals

Semifinals

Final

AQ

Gamania Bears

0

A1

SK Telecom T1 K

2

SK Telecom T1 K

3

NaJin Black Sword

2

AQ

NaJin Black Sword

2

B2

Gambit Gaming

1

SK Telecom T1 K

3

Royal Club

0

AQ

Royal Club

2

A1

Oh My God

0

Royal Club

3

Fnatic

1

AQ

Cloud9

1

B1

Fnatic

2

Source: LoL Esports (Archived 2014-10-07 at the Wayback Machine)

Final standings

Team Ranking

Place	Team	Prize money[3]
1st	SK Telecom T1 K	$1,000,000
2nd	Royal Club	$250,000
3rd–4th	Fnatic	$150,000
	NaJin Black Sword
5–8th	Cloud9	$75,000
	Gamania Bears
	Gambit Gaming
	Oh My God
9–10th	Lemondogs	$45,000
	Samsung Ozone
11–12th	Team SoloMid	$30,000
	Team Vulcun
13–14th	GamingGear.EU	$25,000
	Mineski

Viewership and attendance

The 2013 World Championship final was watched over Twitch by over 32 million people, with a peak of 8.5 million concurrent views, a large increase from the 2012 finals of 8.2 million viewers, with 1.1 millions peak concurrent ones. The numbers shattered the previous records for any eSports event. These numbers were much higher than those of other competitor eSports events for Dota 2 and Starcraft 2, the former of which only reached one million concurrent viewers.^[4]

Riot's 8.5 million concurrent viewers is on a par with the "more than 8 million" people that watched Felix Baumgartner's jump from the edge of space. Exact figures for streaming events are difficult to ascertain, but All Things D reports that Baumgartner's jump was "web video's biggest event ever."

League of Legends is by far the biggest entity in the pro-gaming sector, regularly outstripping the stream viewer numbers of its major competitors, including Valve's Dota 2 and Blizzard's StarCraft II. In context, Valve's flagship Dota 2 tournament — The International 3 — took place two months before the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship finals and reached one million concurrent viewers.