“we perhaps have the most passionate and invested fans”

2023-10-28 09:14:02

The League of Legends World Cup began in South Korea on October 10. Laure Valée, esports consultant for franceinfo, looks back on this extraordinary competition, between Seoul and Busan. The final will take place on November 19.

Electronic sports news with Laure Valée, esports consultant for franceinfo from Korea, where the first round of the esports world championships ends. League of Legends. Already more than two weeks of competitions, and millions of spectators on the Internet around the world.

franceinfo: Laure Valée, do you sense the enthusiasm of the Koreans for this World Cup?

Laure Valée: Well, we were starting to feel the enthusiasm, even before the world championship started. You should know that in Korea, we perhaps have the most passionate and invested fans for esports. There are quite a few fan zones, community gatherings, around esports and around the teams, and even European teams are feeling this impact.

And we were able to speak to Romain Bigeard, who is the general manager of the European team G2 Esports, who is also in Korea with his players, and who explained to us his feelings and the feelings of the players in relation to the Korean fans.

Romain Bigeard: Fans give gifts, amazing stuff, food, personalized clothes, little notes, they come everywhere we go. And yet, we are a big team. We’re used to having a lot of positive intentions from fans in Europe, but here, it’s times 10, times 50. And so that puts pressure, of course, it’s very rewarding. We really have the impression that some of our big players are real stars.

Laure Valée: Esports players in Korea are truly considered real stars. As we recall recently, there were the Asian Games which pitted several Asian countries once morest each other in sporting disciplines, but also esports. And the key for esports players, being exempt from military service which is normally obligatory, is something that we had only known for movie stars, singing stars. But esports players are nationally recognized, so much so that they can have that kind of recognition.

So the Worlds, that’s what we call them, brings together all the best teams in the world. Are there a lot of European teams and French players there?

The World Cup is 16 teams coming from the four corners of the world. And among these 16 teams, we sent four which are European. And among these four teams, we had four French players and a Belgian player, who obviously the French like a lot. Except that most were eliminated.

As we speak, we only have one French player left, which is Hans Sama, one of the biggest French stars we have at the moment and who is part of the G2 esport team. It’s actually the best European hope we had at the start of the competition, and it’s the only European team we have left. So there you have it, we send them strength and we hope that they will go far to represent us.

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