The LPL revealed that the 2020 League of Legends World Championship finals on Oct. 31 will welcome an audience of 6,312 attendees on the Pudong Football Stadium of Shanghai on its Weibo account, earlier today.
LPL journalist Ran translated the Weibo post on her Tumblr page. “Worlds hosting this year has been extremely complicated due to covid19, it is greatly appreciated that Riot made this year’s worlds happen,” the post reads. “For finals, under clear instructions from local government, there will be 6,312 tickets for the audiences to grab, through a lottery program designed by Riot themselves.”
The fans will be able to enter a lottery from Oct. 12 to 14 to try and win a free seat at the Worlds Finals. Some conditions will have to be met to enter, however. The fans must have a level 30 account on League, as well as a Chinese phone number.
Those who will win a seat will have to pay a deposit that will be reimbursed after attending the show. There will be no tickets, but only a list with the IDs of fans who will get the seats. A system of face recognition will also be operated at the event to prevent the spots from being sold.
The city of Shanghai and Riot Games collaborated to ensure the security of the audience during the show by enforcing social distancing and optimal sanitary conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The available seats won’t be next to each other to respect social distancing, and the attendees will have to prove they haven’t contracted the virus. Their temperature will also be checked upon entry.
Due to the global pandemic, Worlds went from rotating to various Chinese cities to taking place almost entirely in a Shanghai studio without an audience. Only the finals will be hosted in the Pudong Stadium. The ceremony will feature a performance from K/DA and another from the artists of the 2020 Worlds anthem, Jeremy McKinnon, MAX, and former K-pop star Henry Lau.
Even if it will be a small audience in comparison to the Stadium’s capacity of over 33,000, it will bring life and excitement both to the ceremony and the match, which will crown the 2020 League of Legends world champion. It will also be the first show of the year hosted by the Pudong Stadium, as well as the only major offline sports event in China of 2020. It’s going to be interesting to see what Riot Games has in store for us during this year’s event.
