
Fan-eye view: Riot Games on creating a superior viewer experience and taking fans forward in esports By Heather McLean
Tuesday, November 5, 2024 - 09:54
Print This Story
View inside the TOC at Riot Games' Dublin RBC for the League of Legends Championships Final 2024
Riot Games is all about meeting the fans where they are and creating a superior level of experience for those fans, whether they are dedicated obsessives of League of Legends or just peaking into a stream to see what is going on. At the League of Legends World Championship Finals 2024 in London on 2 November, Korea's T1 defeated China's BLG. We caught up with Riot Games' Sam Kordower Chaimson, senior manager of broadcast production, and executive broadcast producer for the Worlds, to discuss how esports has disrupted and influenced traditional live sports broadcasting, and how it is moving the fan experience forwards.
Do you think you've disrupted regular live sports broadcasts over the last few years, because you're using and doing cutting-edge stuff and the amount of money you're spending as well is pretty phenomenal?
SKC: I think obviously we draw a lot from traditional sports, and I am sure that folks are looking at us for the tech obviously, because we do some pretty cool things on that front. But I think ultimately what you're seeing a lot in the [sports broadcast] industry now is the storytelling is starting to learn from esports and more traditional video game mediums.
Read more Tech-eye view: Inside the epic remote production for Riot Games' League of Legends World Championships Finals 2024
You see now that the MLB, the NFL and a number of other major leagues around the world as well as for traditional events, are doing alternative broadcasts using alternative technologies or alternative storytelling. I think of the KayRod cast for baseball, with Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez sitting around shooting the shit, talking about baseball, while a game is happening; sounds a whole lot like a Twitch stream to me, a whole lot like a streamer experience to me. And that's something gamers have been doing for a really long time.
Riot Games Dublin staff at its Remote Broadcast Centre watch last weekend's League of Legends Championships Final 2024
How do you plug into where and how your viewers are engaging with you?
SKC: I think traditional sports and traditional media are starting to clue into the fact that fans have different ways of engaging and at Riot we think it's worthwhile to support all those fans, wherever they are. Whether they're watching a more traditional sport editorial broadcast like some of our main language feeds using our traditional broadcast apparatuses, or they're watching one of our co-streamers, or they're watching in another language using a broadcaster that may have a little bit more irreverent content, fans are choosing to engage with our sport in the way they engage with everything else.
So we've rolled out over the last year a vertical feed, so we also produce a vertical world feed, which is a separate product designed for a 9:16 format. It's been in development for a good while longer than a year, but we've started using it on our major events over the last year and offering it as a world feed over the past couple of years after starting it only as a first party product.
Read more Producer-eye view: Getting the lowdown on the League of Legends World Championships Finals 2024
We've seen that take off in a number of parts of the world where the viewership not only is trending towards mobile rather than desktop or traditional set top box, but towards alternative formats like 9:16. So we're seeing not only TikTok of course, which is the obvious one, really grow in popularity, but people watching vertically on YouTube via YouTube shorts we've seen a huge explosion in East Asia on that as well as other platforms that are leaning into 9:16 like Instagram Live, etc. And that comes down to just meeting fans where they are, not just saying, hey, you have to watch our sport and enjoy our sport in the old school sports way that's appropriate for some viewers . We love that kind of storytelling, but we want to meet fans where they are.
What we do at Riot is about serving a core fan experience. And so it's about tailoring our content to resonate with them and to reward them and to validate their passion for what we do, rather than a build it and they will come approach where we just sit in the mountain and say, this is what League of Legends is , because it's never been that case with how we develop the game.
What always blows my mind about esports is the scale of what you have to capture, the number of things you're trying to well capture, but then to tell a story. So with the scale of this final, what are the challenges for you in doing this and how do you get the end result without crying?
SKC: Oh, there are tears! Don't worry, mostly tears of joy. To me, the unique advantage and the unique emotional hook of esports is how relatable it is. I'm never going to throw a 90 mile an hour fastball. I'm never going to make a buzzer-beater, half court shot. I'm never going to drive an F1 car in my life. I'm not going to understand what those experiences are like. But when I see a big play in League of Legends, when Faker [Lee Faker Sang-hyeok] makes an incredible play or we see Bin [Chen Bin Zebin] dominate his opponent, those are experiences I have had in the game one-to-one, maybe not with as much technical mastery of course, but it's something that really resonates with me as a player. I feel it in my soul because I've been there. I've had that similar heartbreak on the same field of battle, on the same court, the same pitch, the same scenario.
And so it'
North America Stories
20/11/2025
MLB Media-Rights Shakeup: NBC's New Three-Year Deal Covers Sunday Night Bas...
20/11/2025
MLB Media-Rights Shakeup: New Deal Will Bring 30 National Games to ESPN's Li...
20/11/2025
MLB Media-Rights Shakeup: Netflix Lands Opening Night, Home Run Derby, Field of ...
20/11/2025
MLB Media-Rights Shakeup Overview: ESPN, NBCU, Netflix Ink Three-Year DealsESPN gets new 30-game package, MLB.TV; NBC extends Sunday nights; Netflix adds tentpo...
20/11/2025
SVG Students To Watch: Henry Thuss, Indiana UniversityThe Southern California product has his goals set on the front benchBy Brandon Costa, Director of Digital ...
20/11/2025
Done+Dusted's Guy Carrington on Creating the Spectacular League of Legends W...
20/11/2025
FIA Extreme H World Cup Host Broadcaster Aurora Goes Inside the Production of th...
20/11/2025
Platinum White Paper: Amagi Utilizes Cloud Production for Sports Events - Multi-...
20/11/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Marc Herklotz, Steady Hand Behind the Sce...
20/11/2025
NFL Deep Dive: How 32 Cameras at Each Stadium Drive Virtual Measurement, Boundar...
20/11/2025
Charlie Shackleton attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Zodiac K...
20/11/2025
L3Harris has achieved NSA Cybersecurity Directorate certification for its KSV-650 space hub end cryptographic unit, ensuring secure, adaptable communications fo...
20/11/2025
L3Harris is strengthening its long-term partnership with Poland through the opening of a new facility in Warsaw to serve as a central business hub for regional ...
20/11/2025
CINCINNATI Oklahoma Community Television (OCT) has selected GatesAir and Triveni Digital as key technology partners in an ATSC 3.0 deployment that establishes a...
20/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has opened a wide-ranging inquiry into the relations between broadcast networks and their affiliates that could...
20/11/2025
NEW YORK Ad spend in the creator economy has more than doubled since 2021 from $13.9B to $29.5B in 2024 and that amount is projected to reach $37 billion in 202...
20/11/2025
Graduate Spotlight: Krysta Mirsik DePuy The educator from Hackettstown, New Jersey, shares how it took her 11 years to find the right graduate program for her...
20/11/2025
LONDON The winners of the Rise Awards 2025, which recognize women and companies whose achievements have stood out in the media technology industry, have been an...
20/11/2025
SANTA MONICA & NEW YORK Lionsgate's Worldwide Television Distribution Group and Debmar-Mercury have launched MovieSphere Gold in more than 30 million homes....
20/11/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has introduced its four-channel HelixNet beltpack, a next-generation advancement of its widely used two-channel model, and anticipates...
20/11/2025
NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. Streaming technology and services provider Kiswe has launched Kiswe Core, a next-generation cloud-based platform designed to simplify the s...
20/11/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the we...
20/11/2025
STUTTGART, Germany 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) has announced that the Canadian multiservice operator Telus has launched its Telus TV+ entertainment platform on Sam...
20/11/2025
Major League Baseball has announced deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering 2026-2028 that make ESPN the exclusive distributor for MLB.TV, put regula...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
20/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Celebrates the Launch of Troll 2 With a Spectacular Sh...
20/11/2025
Editor's note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how developers, 3D practitioners and enterprises can transform their workflows u...
20/11/2025
The NVIDIA Blackwell RTX upgrade is nearing the finish line, letting GeForce NOW Ultimate members across the globe experience true next-generation cloud gaming ...
20/11/2025
Tanya Berger-Wolf's first computational biology project started as a bet wit...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...