SK, Samsung, ROX in e-sports world championship semis

The SK Telecom T1 team plays “League of Legends” during the online game’s World Championship group stage event against Cloud9 of the United States at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, Oct. 9. / Courtesy of Riot Games

By Baek Byung-yeul

Three Korean e-sports clubs ― SK Telecom T1, Samsung Galaxy and ROX Tigers ― reached the semifinals of online game “League of Legends” World Championship, as the annual event wrapped up a series of quarterfinal matchups in Chicago, Sunday (local time).

“League of Legends” is a five-on-five online game. Whoever destroys the other side’s base (known as Nexus) wins. The product of U.S.-based Riot Games has held an annual championship event since 2011 and Korea-based clubs have won the event for three consecutive years since 2013.

The “League of Legends” tournament is also one of the most popular competitive gaming events in the world. Some 334 million watched last year’s tournament held in European cities for five weeks and about 36 million tuned in for the finals where SK Telecom T1 won in Berlin.

This year’s world championship was held in the U.S. and the world’s 16 best clubs competed in the group stage round in San Francisco for a prize pool of about $4 million from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2.

Three Korean clubs emerged from the group stage as group winners, advancing to the quarters. Defending champion SK Telecom T1, sponsored by Korea’s largest mobile carrier SK Telecom, was placed first in Group B, after winning five matches and losing one. The ROX Tigers, runners-up at last year’s event, placed first in Group A and Samsung Galaxy dominated Group D.

It was the Samsung team that secured their spot in the semifinal for the first time as they defeated Cloud9 of the U.S. 3-0 in the first quarterfinal match at the Chicago Theater, Thursday. The SK team was next. Facing the Chinese club Royal Never Give Up on Friday, they gave up the first set of the best-of-five match, but won the following three matches. The ROX Tigers became the third Korean team in the semis after defeating the Chinese club Edward Gaming 3-1, Saturday. The last spot went to London-based H2K Gaming as they beat Albus NoX Luna of Russia 3-0, Sunday.

Changing location to Madison Square Garden in New York, SK Telecom T1 will play the ROX Tigers in the first semifinal matchup this Friday. It is expected to be one of the highlight matches of the tourney as the champions and second-place finishers of last year’s event will meet for a spot in the final round. The following day, Samsung Galaxy, which won in 2014, will play H2K-Gaming.

The final match will be held at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Oct. 29. The winning team will receive $2 million.