Mentioned in this article Games: League of Legends

TJ Sports will open bids for one-two new franchise spots in the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) in 2020. According to an official whitepaper, LPL content broke over 30B viewers in 2018.

Riot Games and TJ Sports will co-host the 2020 League of Legends Worlds Championship. A joint committee will begin seeking partners for the tournament on July 1.

These announcements were made at the Tencent Global Esports Annual Summit, which took place in the Chinese island province Hainan—which itself plans to commit ¥1B RMB ($145.6M USD) to esports development.

On June 20, Tencent Holdings and the Hainan government held the Tencent Global Esports Annual Summit in the Hainan Boao Asia International Conference Center. Multiple Chinese and Western leaders from esports relevant industries attended the event and discussed future plans for the Chinese esports sector.

Jin “Bobby” Yibo and Lin “Leo” Song, co-CEOs of TJ Sports , attended the summit and shared both the achievements of the League of Legends professional scene in 2018, and future plans for the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) in China. TJ Sports is a joint venture of Tencent Games and Riot Games, which was established on Jan. 11, and mainly focuses on League of Legends-relevant business in mainland China.

At the event, Jin announced that the LPL will add one-two franchise spots in 2020, and will look to add new partners in the LPL system. Sources told The Esports Observer that the bid price of a spot would be a minimum of ¥80M RMB ($11.63M USD).

In December of 2018, Dominus Esports (DMO) and Victory 5 (V5) joined the LPL, expanding the number of league teams to 16. Despite the extra one-two spots in 2020, the LPL already has the highest number of teams of any regional League of Legends competition. The top leagues for North America and Europe, which both adopted franchise-style systems, have kept a total of ten teams in their respective regions.

Related Article: Chinese Island Province of Hainan Plans $145.6M Esports Development Fund

In addition, Jin said that the LPL live audience count broke 15B, tournament viewing time broke 2.5B hours, and that the LPL Summer Split Final reached an audience per minute count of more than 70M. In total, the LPL relevant content reached over 30B views in 2018.

Credit: TJ Sports

“This is the seventh year of the League of Legends esports scene,” said Jin. “Those records don’t just mean new breakthroughs in League of Legends, but also means League of Legends esports has become a part of our society.”

Lin announced that TJ Sports had released a League of Legends Esports white paper, which chronicles the eight-year esports development of LoL. The white paper is expected to describe the history and current situation of League of Legends esports, and also the mission of TJ Sports in the future.

In addition, TJ Sports established a charity organization called LPL Cares, which has partnered with Tencent Esports, Tencent Charity, World of Art Brut Culture (WABC), and One Foundation (a China-based charity organization founded by Chinese film star Li Lianjie) to care about players’ mental and physical health, and to have a positive impact in society.

At the end of Jin’s speech, TJ Sports and Riot Games announced they would create the 2020 League of Legends World Championship Committee to co-host the game’s largest annual tournament in China. Partnership requirements for the 2020 LoL Worlds Championship will start on July 1. In addition, Riot Games global esports events manager Derrick Asiedu was named as chairman, Lin will be executive chairman, and Jin will be vice executive chairman.