How the ‘League of Legends’ World Finals Teasers Are Made

Ten players stand on the stage, facing each other, with eyes locked on the trophy placed between them. A creeping artificial mist rolls in at their feet while the spotlight casts shadows on the baroque designs of the theater behind them. Some people shout directions, others rapidly snapping pictures, but I just stand in silent appreciation, knowing that the scene will become part of League of Legends esports history.

After six weeks of grueling competition on the World Championship stage, two of the most tenacious League of Legends teams — China’s Bilibili Gaming and South Korea’s T1 — secured their places in the 2024 World Championship Final. 

For Bilibili Gaming, the stakes couldn’t be higher. It has been three long years since any team from the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) division last claimed a world title. Bilibili Gaming looks to break their curse after years marked by close calls on the international stage, where they repeatedly fell short of victory.

Opposite them is the most decorated team in League history: T1. However, the weight of their reputation — four World Championship titles — casts a long shadow over the international tournament. It’s a story that happens to align neatly with the themes of the season’s anthem, Linkin Park’s “Heavy is the Crown.” A few days later on Nov. 2, T1 will walk away with the trophy, but at this point it’s still anyone’s game.

These stories are woven into the seven-minute teaser for the League of Legends World Championship finals created by Riot Games and Good Boy Creative, transporting fans beyond gameplay to reveal the personal stakes driving each player.

In the week leading up to the World Finals, Rolling Stone went behind-the-scenes of the production of this year’s teaser to explore how its creators work to turn around an emotional, highly polished video that culminates weeks of competition in just a matter of days. It’s a process that reflects the intensity of the competition itself, led by a group whose goal is bringing fans closer to the sport and its players. 

Esports catches up

In a private box inside London’s New Wimbledon Theatre, Stefan Richardson (Riot Games’ director of global broadcast) watches the crew shoot a scene for the finals’ trailer. Since taking their current form during the mid-season invitational in 2021, League of Legends’ cinematic teasers have grown to be emotional deep-dives that introduce fans old and new to the players and their stories that make up the heart of each tournament. The first one was born in a time of global uncertainty, with Covid-19 restrictions preventing fans from attending events in person. 

Between setups, Richardson looks back to when the company first started investing in more ambitious video features for its events. He recalls how the idea might have seemed bold at first, but it quickly paid off. “I remember thinking to myself, either fans are going to love this, or I’m going to be looking for a job tomorrow,” he says. This gamble marked a pivotal moment for Riot as they sought to bring a level of cinematic storytelling that esports had yet to see.

For a long time, Riot has been trying to shape the future of esports, and by extension, make it part of the globally accepted definition of “sports,” alongside games like football. By looking at how traditional sports are marketed and the ways their stories are told to (and by) fans, Riot attempted to replicate it in their own games, League of Legends and Valorant.

“There is a market here that’s being underserved, and it’s our players and our fans,” Richardson says, mentioning how this project is inspired by NHL hype videos or NFL Films. 

However, despite their boom in the late 2010s, esports have historically been considered outsiders from standard sports media. And the production value of their marketing didn’t compare either. Richardson points to the featured shots on game day broadcasts, which he says had mostly been “players with crossed arms in front of an LED wall [just] standing there.” 

For years, the visual landscape of League esports content has leaned on basic formats like “aftermovies” that capture event highlights, and fan-made montages celebrating individual players, teams, or regional leagues. While these served as an entry point, they lacked the polished approach of traditional sports media. 

During a tour of the theater’s filming spaces, producer Douglas Kerr explains that the community’s hunger for storytelling is what differentiates League fans from traditional sports ones. “You just can’t get that level of fandom out of a traditional sport,” he says, explaining that the passion fans have for esports arguably runs even deeper than that of other sports. 

After all, League of Legends is only about 15 years old, meaning that many of its fans were there for its inception. The game, its players, and the audience all grew up in tandem, meaning the production team can layer in subtle details, like references to previous matches, even from several years back, knowing that they’ll register with audiences.

Three years and two Emmys later, what started as promos for remote events has evolved into a parasocial connection for fans. After all, these trailers do more than just advertise — they connect audiences personally to the players, turning them from distant figures on a screen into relatable heroes. 

The right stuff

To make these videos, Riot enlists a core team of 20 people between writers, editors, directors, VFX specialists, and producers. For live broadcasts, Riot and partners Good Boy Creative rely on director Phil Choi, who is on stage calling the shots like a team captain. From Riot comes the story team, an ensemble of some of the “best minds in our esport,” as Richardson calls them. This team includes writers Willow Forde, Garrett Fulwider, Daniel Collette, and Tyler Erzberger, the latter two being former ESPN journalists.

Richardson refers to Erzberger as the team’s “walking encyclopedia,” saying, “During our brainstorming meetings Phil [Choi] will ask, ‘What’s something from 2019 or 2020 that’s relevant to this?,’ and Tyler will just spit it out on the spot.”

Accurately reliving and celebrating pivotal moments in the game’s history is essential to serving the fans. After all, like in many other sports, audiences are the heartbeat of League, and their knowledge and commitment to every detail, play, and statistic is what drives its stories.

“If you don’t know your League of Legends, they will chew you up and spit you out,” Richardson laughs, “The only way for us to stay ahead of that was to go get the most knowledgeable fans on the planet and make them a part of our team.”  

But focusing too heavily on dense history might alienate newcomers to the esport, which is why each teaser must tell a concise story that can appeal to those that have never seen a League game before. The dual approach of respecting both legacy and accessibility lets each trailer serve as a bridge, linking dedicated fans and new audiences alike through the same storytelling hooks.

And with multiple events a year, it’s not about just “one-upping” the last production, as Richardson says, but finding new ways to engage the fans by focusing on player journeys. “When you do eight tournaments a year [between League and Valorant], the challenge is that fans keep expecting great things,” Richardson says. And repetition is not an option. 

Take, for instance, the semifinal teaser from 2023, which has racked up over 2.5 million views and since become a pillar of League of Legends esports history. Now, the production team is tasked with recreating that magic, while diving deeper into the players’ narratives in fresh ways.

Based on the response to last week’s premier, it looks like they might’ve done just that. The Worlds 2024 Finals’ teaser has currently reached over 1.5 million views, and served as an epic climax to what would end up being the most-viewed esports match of all time.

The ticking clock

For the 2024 World Championship finals teaser, Riot had a total of five days, or just a little over 120 hours, to adjust the script based on the qualified teams; bring shooting equipment and crew to London; configure the filming location; shoot interviews and b-roll with all 10 players; edit; localize the assets; and finalize its publishing so that fans could find it ready on Saturday morning GMT. 

With limited resources and a compressed timeline, the ability to produce a cinematic experience that resonates with fans and delivers on the emotional scope needed is incredibly challenging. But to Riot’s production team, it’s a must.

The team begins with brainstorming sessions where they lay out the narrative, centering it on the core theme they help define for the tournament. This year the theme was “Make them believe.” From there, it’s storyboarded and scouted. 

“We’re very specific about the shots we want and only capture what we need,” Richardson says. The 5-day window limits the number of setups they can do. The production timeline also varies by complexity based on how many teams are still in the competition. 

For example, during play-in brackets earlier in the tournament Riot captured footage from 16 teams —  80 players — within two days. “Every day you add of having all those units here adds a mid six-figures number to the overall budget of the tournament,” Richardson notes. 

Within the players’ limited schedules, the production only has two to three hours per team to capture everything they need, from B-roll to interviews. And for the 2024 World finals’ teaser the production team planned to record some special reactions from the 10 players.

During the intense six-week window teams spend in person at Worlds, players are separated from their day-to-day lives and loved ones. By bringing friends and family to them by way of video messages, the production team built a teaser that becomes something deeper and more personal. Rather than just hype them up for competition, players are afforded moments of real, heartfelt support from the people they leave behind to chase their dream. 

As quickly as it’s captured, the footage is shipped off to Riot’s Remote Broadcast Center (RBC) to be edited immediately by the post-production team in Los Angeles. And while the trailers’ music is typically one of Riot’s originals — like the 2024 World Championship Orchestral Theme or a seasonal song like “Awaken” — it often undergoes the creative touch of a composer who rearranges the piece to better align with the specific emotional tone of the teaser.

The team might also add digital 3D assets to the video features — like marble statues of League of Legends champions to the footage of the Petit Palais, Paris. For that semifinal teaser, 3D models of the champions were integrated into plates of the real-life environment, a painstaking process that required multiple artists and a precise alignment between 3D assets and physical sets.

“If you know anything about post-production timelines for standard commercials, television, it takes months to do anything like that. We have hours at best,” Kerr says, highlighting the speed at which Riot’s team operates.

On top of all this, the video must be localized in 22 languages. That work is done by HYPER, Riot’s custom-built high-speed localization system and happens in just a matter of hours. This rapid turnaround ensures that Riot’s broadcast talent, who may not understand the language of each player’s interview, can still weave a cohesive narrative based on what the global team has crafted, on top of reaching a diverse audience in post-air VOD.

The result? A Worlds 2024 that personally resonates with fans, telling the overlapping stories of the players in an impactful way — all created in the downtime between two matches. 

It’s effective, too, bringing many of the over 14 thousand people in the O2 Arena the day of the final to tears, along with the millions who watched at home live or on YouTube. For fans and players alike, the trailer was more than a hype piece; it was a celebration of the journey, the pressures, and the triumphs that define League of Legends esports.

Together, Riot and Good Boy have created something that goes beyond the traditional matchup hype trailer, and sets the bar high for its competitors. Rather than just dry play-by-plays and commentary, League of Legends’ cinematic storylines elevate esports’ profile to be qualitatively on par with its more traditional counterparts.

The only question is: Where does it go next year?