Despite suffering their first loss of the entire tournament in Game 3, SK Telecom T1 prevailed over fellow Koreans KOO Tigers to claim the LoL World Championship and $1 million in front of a sold-out crowd at Mercedes Benz Arena in Berlin. (4:31)

In 2014, for the first time, a streamed game's broadcast attracted more viewers than the NBA Finals. More than 27 million people around the world tuned in to League of Legends World Championship. A year later, more than 31 million people watched SK Telecom T1 beat KOO Tigers 3-1 for the 2015 title and a split of a $1 million prize.

All this is arguably the culmination of a recent trend that has seen esports vault into the forefront of many consumers' minds. To meet and expand the ever increasing interest in esports, League of Legends' creator, Riot Games, opted to expand its marketing horizons and dabble in the fantasy scene, which brings us to the here and now.

To many, the game itself is still an enigma, and its rules are as cryptic to someone on the outside as the NFL's penalty system is to me (I have yet to hear an adequate explanation of what on earth is "clipping"). Seeing as I would never gamble upon a football team without full knowledge of the rules, I imagine that many potential new fantasy owners might be intimidated by professional League of Legends, and esports as a whole, due to that complexity. Thankfully, like many things in life, the game becomes quite simple after a brief explanation.

What is League of Legends?

The top League of Legends players from around the world gather in Los Angeles for an LCS All-Stars event last month. Earlier, the League of Legends World Championships 2015 final match was viewed by over 36 million people online worldwide. Riot

League of Legends (LoL for short) is in a genre known as the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or MOBA for short. The history of the MOBA stretches all the way back to the modding community of Starcraft, and fortunately its underlying design is both simple to understand and has remained relatively static throughout the years. The game is ultimately one of objective defense -- a glorified capture the flag, if you will. Each player takes control of a unique and powerful unit, known in League as a champion, and, along with four allies, does battle with an enemy team comprised of the same. Each team is looking to destroy the central building for the opposition, appropriately known as a Nexus.

They are, however, not alone in this struggle. Each Nexus spawns weak, computer-controlled units, known as minions, that will mindlessly march down one of the main three lanes into which the game is divided. Eventually, the minions will encounter their counterparts on the opposite team, and they will immediately engage in a fight to the death.

Additionally, each lane is defended by a series of powerful turrets, and the minions are integral to destroy these emplacements. Small groups can serve as cannon fodder for allied champions, while larger groups can reduce enemy structures to rubble single-handedly, granting their team the valuable gold that doing so rewards.

League of Legends strategy