Over 3.2 million people signed up to have a chance to win a free seat in the Pudong Football Stadium of Shanghai to watch the 2020 League of Legends World Championship finals on Oct. 31, Riot Games announced 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.”
Riot’s global head of communications David Higdon revealed the number on Twitter and showed the progress made by the game by sharing a photo of the first League World Championship, which was hosted by a Swedish conference center in 2011 with a small production team.
“Within the first four hours of the Pre-Registration window for tickets, we hit 1,000,000 registrants,” he outlined in another tweet. The giveaway reached two million registrations within the first 12 hours and the final number amounted to 3,205,750.
Only 6,312 seats will be available in the 33,000-capacity stadium, however, which means registered fans only have a 0.2 percent chance of winning a seat.
A large number of Chinese League fans are likely interested in attending the Worlds finals after almost a year of online esports matches due to COVID-19. The League finals will also be the only major sports event with an audience in China in 2020.
Some conditions had to be met to register for the lottery, though. You needed to have a valid ID, a Chinese phone number, and a League account that’s over level 30. Despite the giveaway being free, winning registrants will have to pay a deposit that will be reimbursed after they attend the event.
If a registrant doesn’t answer a confirmation SMS or pay a deposit within 24 hours, their seat will be given to someone else. The registration process only opened for a few days and closed tonight. All winning participants will be revealed tomorrow, Oct. 16.
To prevent the free spots from being illegally sold for an exorbitant price, a facial recognition system will be used to filter the entries of the attendees into the stadium. The invitations will also be in the form of a guest list rather than giving away actual tickets.
Riot and the city of Shanghai collaborated to welcome a reduced audience to the World’s 2020 finals while enforcing optimal sanitary conditions, such as mandatory temperature checks and social-distancing measures, to ensure the audience’s safety amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
