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In partnership with Riot Games, Super League Gaming (SLG) is launching a series of League of Legends tournaments in movie theaters around the country. In Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami players will be able to compete seriously in a city vs. city tournament called City Champs or more casually in intracity tournaments called City Rec.
SLG was formed around two years ago and has hosted gaming events in movie theaters before with titles like Minecraft. The Rift Herald spoke with SLG CEO Ann Hand Wednesday.
“The idea was that 99.9 percent of gamers out there are amateur gamers,” Hand said. “We’re bringing together gamers of all different levels and ages and across a variety of games that they play into these physical leagues so that they can compete and vie and move up the ranks, but also just find new ways to connect socially.”
There will be two separate League events hosted by SLG: a competitive series called City Champs and a more casual event called City Rec.
City Champs will feature the top 60 players from each of those four cities, as selected through an application process. Each city will break up into 12 teams of five. Those teams will then play the teams from the other cities in a round-robin tournament over November and early December.
Meet the four teams! The Miami Menace:
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The Los Angeles Shockwave:
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The Dallas Dynamite:
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And the Chicago Force:
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In terms of player selection for the teams, Hand described it as a “golden ticket-like approach.” Players must be at least level 30 and 16 years of age and older. Qualified players can apply on Superleague.com, letting SLG know their rank and summoner ID. Hand said SLG intends to use City Rec to help identify potential top players in each region.
City Rec will be a more casual experience focused more towards the social aspect of gathering and playing League of Legends. City Rec will also feature League Unlocked, which unlocks every champion and an assortment of skins while at the theater, while also giving Influencer Points (IP) and Experience Points (XP) bonuses. SLG hopes to make City Rec a year-round event.
“We ran a first test event in Dallas a couple weeks ago,” Hand said. “And with 60 new fresh faces, just watching, probably the biggest surprise is when they first walk into the theater and they see the big screen and you know one player said “Gosh, this is like my LCS.”
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Hand said SLG has been working with Riot on this project for the last year, fine-tuning the project to make sure it was something the League community would respond well to.
“We just found from the moment out of the gate that they’re obviously extremely community-centric,” Hand said. “Everything is about making sure this is something their community wants. They’re very careful with that community and as they should be, and thoughtful about only bringing them things that have been validated as things that they want, but they’re also just very collaborative to work with.”
Season five of Super League Gaming’s Minecraft series is underway nationwide.