League of Legends World Championship: With Finals Looming in San Francisco, Riot Games Goes All-in on REMI in Mexico City, NYC, Atlanta Returning to in-person events, the team aims to capture the excitement of the onsite audience By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor Friday, November 4, 2022 - 12:41 pm
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After two years without screaming fans in the stands, the League of Legends World Championship - the most-watched esports event on the planet - is back in full force this year with packed houses for its events throughout North America. After stages in Mexico City, New York City, and Atlanta over the past five weeks, Worlds will culminate with the highly anticipated Finals tomorrow at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
The atmosphere at the League of Legends World Championship Semifinals in Atlanta (Photo: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
It's night and day, says Sam Chaimson, manager, live broadcast production, Riot Games. Seeing fans cheering with signs, screaming, jumping up and down, and reacting makes for a totally different ballgame - both for fans [at the venue] and around the world. And it adds so much color, flavor, texture, and joy to our show. That joy, passion, and excitement reads on camera. That contagious energy comes through the lens, and it's infectious for fans watching at home.
To serve live productions in Mexico City, New York City, and Atlanta over the past five weeks, Riot Games is once again leaning on its tried-and-true REMI production model and leveraging its LCS (LoL Championship Series) Studio facility in Los Angeles. Riot Games was an early pioneer in the REMI realm. The pandemic drastically accelerated its remote-production efforts, and the fruits of its innovation in 2020 and 2021 are paying off at this year's Worlds.
We have been doing some form of REMI for a long time, notes Michael Caal, technical broadcast manager, Riot Games. It has always been on our roadmap, but the pandemic definitely fast-forwarded a lot of workflows that we had been holding off on. We had to get the production team accustomed to those workflows quickly because it all happened very fast. Once we started doing [in-person events] again, we had the confidence to know we can basically do the same types of workflows just with even better technologies.
Traveling REMI Caravan: Mexico City to NYC to Atlanta to San Francisco Riot's global events team is responsible for producing a world feed that is made available to 22 broadcast partners (who create live feeds in 21 languages) for the Play-In stage in Mexico City (Arena Esports Stadium at Artz Pedregal), Group and Quarterfinal stages in NYC (Hulu Theater at MSG), Semifinals in Atlanta (State Farm Arena), and this weekend's Finals at the Chase Center.
Riot Games' Sam Chaimson (left) and Michael Caal onsite in NYC for the LoL Worlds Quarterfinals
Feeds from the venue are backhauled to the LCS Studio in Los Angeles via Riot Direct, the private network used for LoL gameplay around the globe. The world feed is produced out of the main control room in L.A. with only a small portion of the production team onsite at the venue. Chaimson, the lead director, and the assistant director are onsite, with the rest of the production crew - TD, A1, observers (in-game camera operators), and graphics and EVS replay operators - in L.A.
We split it up so that we can get the best of both worlds, says Chaimson. Being [onsite] in person makes providing creative input so much easier in terms of blocking cameras and working with the stage managers. Thanks to the networking and transmission technology Riot has developed, the latency for comms and video when interfacing with our TD back in Los Angeles is pretty negligible. We're able to cut a cool show that's not compromised by the split.
Sam Chaimson (left) is onsite along with the director and AD for LoL Worlds productions; the rest of the production team is in LA.
To accommodate the constant globetrotting required by Riot Games' major events, the engineering team has built out a pair of identical transmission kits (TX1 and TX2) and a pair of MADI-based audio-routing kits that leapfrog one another from one event to the next along with a corresponding Realm, the private game server used exclusively for pro-level competitive LoL and other Riot Esports major global events and ensuring near zero-level latency.
We built out the two transition racks at the beginning of the year], says Caal, and they have put on a lot of my mileage: Turkey, Copenhagen, Singapore, Korea, and now [North America]. Each consists of 40 16 Haivision SRT paths, and they also have the core network broadcast switches that we string out to all the locations around the venue.
In addition to the bulk of the production team, the L.A. facility houses Riot's global transmission operation, which distributes a clean version of the world feed to teams in Brazil, China, Korea, Turkey, and other regions to create their own world broadcast featuring commentary in their respective languages.
Feast for the Eyes: Creating the In-Venue Experience at Worlds Anyone who has been to LoL Worlds events knows just how eye-popping the experience can be, with a cavalcade of striking visuals on the LED displays, impressive stage pieces, and electrifying lighting elements.
This year, Riot's creative team once again partnered with POSSIBLE to develop custom LED content for each Worlds stage. Quince Imaging handles the processing for the live LED-board shows, and Ventuz graphics software drives the screen content.
Teams Gen.G (left) and DRX compete at the League of Legends World Championship Semifinals in Atlanta. (Photo: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
In order to tell the story of the tournament from stage to stage, says Chaimson, the visuals should evolve
