The World Championships in League of Legends have started and the first favorite has stumbled: the Chinese champions Bilibili Gaming loses the match against LNG ESports. The key player was midlaner Lee “Scout” Ye-Chan (26), who was actually not allowed to travel to Europe. Meanwhile, Germany is keeping its fingers crossed for G2 and Caps and is excited about it on Twitch. We look at the most important results from the first two game days in the Swiss Stage of LoL Worlds 2024.
What’s the surprise at LoL Worlds?
The big surprise is that the favorite to win the World Cup, Bilibili Gaming, lost to LNG Esports, another team from China. It wasn’t intended that way. LNG Esports only narrowly qualified for the Worlds, Bilibili Gaming dominated the Chinese league LPL in 2024.
The match was a first highlight of the Worlds: LNG was able to win the match with an outstanding midlaner scout on Yone (7 kills, only one death). It was questionable whether Scout could even take part in the tournament because a legal dispute with his former team jeopardized the key player’s participation.
At Bilibili Gaming, knight is one of the mid laners on whom the eyes of the world rest. The 24-year-old has been considered a huge talent and the upcoming new star in LoL for years, but has not yet been able to prove his class internationally.
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A lot of money and effort were apparently able to solve the situation surrounding Scout
How could Scout participate in Worlds? According to reports from South Korea (via reddit), Scout’s participation was said to be on a knife’s edge. The South Korean is involved in a legal dispute and therefore, as an immigrant, he is actually not allowed to leave China. But the World Cup will take place in Europe. Participation was therefore not possible.
The precarious situation had to be clarified under considerable time pressure because Scout’s team was only able to qualify at the last moment.
Allegedly, Scout’s agency sorted out the situation and showed “excessive support”, i.e. they put their all into it. Apparently a large deposit had to be paid in order for everything to work and for Scout to be allowed to travel to Europe.
Scout was also able to convince against DK Plus:
Gen G. looks almost unbeatable now
What about the other favorites? Two teams are already through, these are Gen G., who were able to defeat three teams from Asia and are starting the tournament extremely strong. They are considered favorites to win the World Cup in 2024.
Your midlaner Chovy is the second star alongside knight who is still missing major international success and who could inherit Faker as the face of LoL.
Unfortunately awesome: Chovy and Gen G. beat the South Korean champions Hanwha Life.
The second team that was able to qualify for the knockout round with a score of 3-0 is LNG Esports with Scout, who, in addition to Bilbili Gaming, also defeated Dplus KIA with Showmaker.
All other teams have already suffered a defeat, including T1 with Faker.
G2 loses to the Korean champions
Which game were the German fans completely into? The German fans were particularly excited on Friday afternoon when the top European team G2 had to compete against the champions from South Korea, Hanhwa Life Esports.
The Europeans around Caps were able to keep the match even for a long time, but in the end a small mistake in the Baron’s fight was enough for G2 to be crushed with no chance.
Tolkin’s German co-stream was watched by a peak of 44,575 people on Twitch:
The 5 teams from the West are fighting for survival in LoL
What about the teams from the West? Not good at all. Fnatic, G2 Esports and FLYQUEST were each able to win a match, but only against the absolute outsiders from the small regions.
Mad Lions KOI and Team Liquid are both 0-2 and about to head home. A team from the USA was already kicked out of the World Championship in the preliminary round: LoL: World Championship claims its first victim in Berlin and reddit is merciless to young US professionals