Riot Games has announced a $5m prize pool for the League of Legends (LoL) World Championship 2025.
The publisher’s Global Head of LoL Esports, Chris Greeley, confirmed the prize pool in an interview on March 16th ahead of the First Stand Tournament finals.
The LoL World Championship, or ‘Worlds, ‘ is the most prestigious competition in the game’s year-long esports season. Last year’s Worlds edition became the most-watched esports tournament in history, with 6.94m viewers tuning into the Grand Final between Bilibili Gaming and winner T1.
Following Greeley’s interview, this year’s Worlds event is already primed to break records once again. Its prize pool will be more than double the $2.225m prize money from 2024. Moreover, Greeley shared that bonuses related to merch revenues could increase team winnings even further.
In an announcement earlier this month, Riot revealed format changes to Worlds 2025, including a decrease in team slots from 20 to 17. However, it is still a long road to the season-ending event held in China throughout October and November.
Until then, fans can look forward to the season’s second international competition, the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI). Taking place in Vancouver, Canada, from June 27th until July 12th, MSI will invite 10 teams to compete for a $2m prize pool.
The first cross-regional event of the year was the First Stand Tournament, which concluded last weekend. The newly-introduced competition featured a $1m prize pool and Riot’s novel ‘Fearless Draft’ format.
According to Greeley, Fearless Draft will be continued for the remaining 2025 tournaments: “We had a lot of internal conversations, communicating with players, professional games and local leagues, and gathered feedback. Everyone had a positive response.”
LoL Esports in the Future
The Global Head of LoL Esports also discussed the current state of the game’s competitive ecosystem, emphasising long-term sustainability over profitability.
“The goal of LoL Esports is not to become a profitable esports. We are focused on building a sustainable ecosystem,” explained Greeley.
Greeley shared that Riot strives to build an ecosystem where professional and amateur organisations can grow and make a profit.
He expressed a positive view on the last 15 years of LoL esports: “I am satisfied with the path we have taken for fifteen years and look forward to it in the future. I hope it will be something like that that we can look at in the next thirty years.”
