Riot reveals new LCK stadium – League of Legends

Riot games has recently revealed a new stadium for the LCK, arguably the most competitive region in professional League of Legends. This new stadium, called the “LoL Park”, encompasses a new, never seen before design compared to prior existing LCS equivalent stadiums. The LoL Park was designed to not only have more competitive integrity, but also serves to improve the viewing experience for spectators on site. The new stadium will hold up to 500 people in the stands, quite a large amount for a national / regional based tournament stadium.

© Inven Global | LCS

Layout

Unlike the traditional design, where the pros are placed at one side facing the crowd while primarily looking at their screens, the new LoL Park has completely changed this setup. The players will now be sat in the centre of the stadium, with the audience surrounding the stage. As expected, there will also be 3 large viewing screens facing different directions, allowing all the seatting spectators to have a very clear viewing experience.

This sort of layout is more commonly found in international matches as it fits more people, where the crowd is many times larger. Considering Korea is extremely big on esports, especially in League of Legends, the attractive design for regular LCK matches will pull in a greater crowd.

Competitive integrity

While it does look nice, the LoL Park will be breaking one of Riot’s key features in competitive League of Legends, by introducing a glass enclosure to separate the players from the rest of the audience. Riot was previously hesitant to introduce such a design, as they believed enclosing the players would take away from the viewing experience. While this may be the case, it will certainly improve the quality of the matches.

That said, given that the players will be facing the same direction as the audience; the crowd from behind, will be able to see the player’s screen, allowing for a better viewing atmosphere.

These glass enclosures are designed to block all sound coming from the crowd. While professional players are already required to wear noise cancelling headphones, it does not block all the sound, such as cheers and “oohs”, which may give away an ambush and may be distracting overall.