On November 19, 2023, Riot Games recently concluded the World Championship 2023 for their game League of Legends. The finals included two powerhouses from China and Korea, namely Weibo Gaming and T1, respectively. The two teams fought their way through nearly a month of various matches with teams from all around the world. Capstone-Intel Corporation looks into how the international event was received by the Filipino audience.
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Background
League of Legends is a 5 versus 5 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game created by the game development company Riot Games. The League of Legends World Championships, more colloquially known as Worlds, started in 2011. It began with competitors from Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia.
One of the most anticipated teams to go through the event was a Korean team by the name of T1, as this roster was composed of Choi “Zeus” Woo-je, Mun “Oner” Hyeon-jun, Lee “Gumayusi” Min-hyeong, Ryu “Keria” Min-seok, and one of the main faces of League of Legends e-sports, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok.
After the quarterfinals of the World Championships 2023, T1 was the only Korean team left in the tournament, against three other teams from China, despite the event itself being hosted in Korea. This led to them becoming the crowd favorite, especially following their heartbreaking loss in the finals last year.
After a rigorous match, they take the overall championship title, earning Faker’s fourth world title and the first world championship title for the entirety of this year’s roster.
Methodology
From August 20, 2023 to November 20, 2023, Capstone-Intel utilized its social listening tools in order to scan publicly available Facebook accounts for their posts that mention “Worlds 2023”. It should be noted that there were no specific demographics or personal data that were tracked.
Facebook performance
Capstone-Intel’s social listening tool scanned through Facebook in order to garner posts that are about Worlds 2023, or at the very least make mention of the event. The results indicate that there were 705 posts in total. Among these posts are 16,633 total comments, 63,183 total shares, and a reaction count of 464.146.
This consolidated into a total engagement score of 111,260.9.
Dominant reaction, top stories
The top story that involved Worlds 2023 comes from the official LOL Esports Facebook page. The story posted was the announcement that T1 won their finals match and have been titled the 2023 World Champions. This post garnered 54,579 (26.1 percent) Like reactions, 153,351 (73.4 percent) Love reactions, 333 (0.2 percent) Haha reactions, 449 (0.2 percent) Wow reactions, 54 (0.1 percent) Sad reactions, and 19 (0.1 percent) Angry reactions. This led to an engagement score of 140,969.3.
The second story is one that was posted on PTV’s official news channel through a clip reporting T1’s qualification for the finals. This clip garnered 7,031 (16.8 percent) Like reactions, 31,761 (75.9 percent) Love reactions, 166 (0.4 percent) Haha reactions, 2,893 (6.9 percent) Wow reactions, and 2 (0.1 percent) Sad reactions. The engagement score for this post was 14,669.9.
Finally. the third top story comes from Filipino content creator and streamer Razzie Binx, in which he posted a Facebook reel showing his reaction to the winning moment of T1 during the finals. This was able to receive 12,563 (34.6 percent) Like reactions, 19,004 (52.4 percent) Love reactions, 4,599 (12.7 percent) Haha reactions, 108 (0.3 percent) Wow reactions, 4 Sad reactions, and 2 Angry reactions. This yielded an engagement score of 7,128.6.
