I’ve been writing a lot about live game tournament events, viewer numbers, and the passion of fans supporting their favourite teams. But to actually be one of those viewers—one of those shouting, rabid fans at a live event—was something I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing until recently. Enter League of Legends and the NA LCS finals.
After a push to hold bigger LoL events in Canada, Riot Games—the developer behind the global sensation—announced that the NA LCS Spring Finals would be held in Vancouver, at the Pacific Coliseum. It took no time at all for me to jump on buying three tickets in the hopes that I could scavenge together two friends to be my live-event wingmen. After the struggle of waking up as early as we could in order to get to the front of the venue lines, the surreal nature of what I was about to walk into hit me—I was going to watch five guys play video games against another five guys in Pacific Coliseum along with about 10,000 fans. When the doors finally opened, it was a mad dash to get in line for photos with the teams playing the next day in the finals.
Saturday was a great introduction to the energy of the event; merchandise was bought and free things were obtained. The actual matches went to the fifth game in a best-of-five match and kept me and the other fans on the edge of our seats the whole time.
But the real action was on Sunday for the first-place match. It was one of the most electric and uplifting experiences of my life.
The first two games were an absolute stomp for fan favourite Team Solo Mid, but, after some incredibly close games, their opponents, Cloud 9, came back and took it all the way to a deciding game five. In what was one of the most memorable games that’s been played for a long time, Team Solo Mid finally came out on top.
The one thing I learned from the other fans is that we may be of different backgrounds, have different teams, and never meet, but we all share something in common: the love of the game.