- Riot Games posts a video showing the 2022 Worlds host cities
- The video was swiftly privated but stayed long enough to be seen by thousands
- The World Championships are forming up to be “a robust continental tour” of North America
Riot Games accidentally showed the 2022 World Championship host cities through a short YouTube video. The video was swiftly private, but thousands of fans already saw it, and the company has had to confirm the release officially.
Riot’s Accidental Announcement
This year’s League of Legends World Championship was held in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik and ended just a few weeks ago. However, the company has already chosen where it will conduct its 2022 tournament and accidentally announced it.
Riot posted a short video on YouTube on November 20 at approximately 5pm CT but was quickly made private just minutes after. In this short time, however, fans were able to see the venues for the 2022 World Championship and Reddit exploded with discussions about it.
The Cities of the 2022 World Championship
According to the video, the tournament will be held in four cities across North America. These are New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and Mexico City. This means that the League of Legends Worlds will be returning to the North American continent for the first time in six years. Riot says the event as “a robust continental tour”. The inclusion of Mexico City into the hosts also means this will be the first international LoL event to be set in Mexico.
The situation of the last two years forced Riot to conduct one of the esports world’s largest events in just one location. The 2020 World Championship was held in Shanghai, and this year’s tournament was held in Reykjavik, Iceland. However, the initial plan was for the World Championship to be a tour of five Asian cities, namely Shanghai, Qingdao, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Shenzhen. The pandemic forced Riot to move the event to just a single location as they did back in 2020.
It is still unknown if the 2022 World Finals will host a live audience. This year’s worlds did not, instead being streamed exclusively, even breaking several viewership records. With constantly changing guidelines and extra safety protocols to ensure the health of players and citizens, it is unclear how many people will be permitted to watch in person, if any at all. The situation is being further complicated by the fact that the Worlds are planned to be hosted in three different countries, with each possibly having different travel rules.
There is still hope that an in-house audience will be permitted, as all the major sports leagues in North America do currently play their games in front of a live crowd.
