How to Organize LoL Tournaments For Local Events

There are many small communities that like to organize LoL tournaments as local events. For many small businesses like internet cafes or game shops, holding a small-scale League of Legends tournament can draw a quick crowd of both competitors and audience members to advertise your shop. The problem is whether or not you can organize LoL tournaments according to Riot Games’ terms of service and how you can go about doing it.

Can You Organize LoL Tournaments Locally?

Yes. Riot Games allows the community to hold their own LoL tournaments locally as long as they follow basic guidelines for health, safety, and integrity. Any tournament that doesn’t have a cash prize of above $10,000 can be held without the need for permission from Riot Games. Events that have prizes that exceed that amount need to be directed to Riot Games’ esports committee where they’ll send out specific instructions that the organizers need to follow.

Keep in mind that Riot Games doesn’t give out prize supports for local events but there’s probably no harm in reaching out to try asking them for some goodies. However, the chances of getting any sort of cash support for your event are abysmally low. It’s your event. Make sure that you are able to shoulder all the expenses for your tournament, especially in the prizing department because it’s your decision to hold it in the first place.

Things to Prepare for Your Tournament

As a tournament organizer, you need to prepare for your tournament. It’s not just about having 10-30 people gather together and play a few games, there should be a structure needed to organize LoL tournaments so that players will feel incentivized to play. It’s always a good idea to be prepared about 14 days before the tournament to give you and your players enough time to fix any issues regarding the structure of the tournament and the scheduling of the event.

Remember that as the organizer, you need to be firm about implementing the structure of your event. Your participants will have a lot of suggestions to make it easier for them but entertaining too many requests will result in chaos. Prepare these following items ahead of time and make sure to always follow up with your participants through Discord or another service to address any issues or replace any participants if necessary.

1. Venue & Equipment

The first thing you need to prepare is the venue and equipment. You need to have at least 10 PCs if you plan to hold a physical event and a venue that can hold the number of participants you plan to invite. If you have more than 2 teams and only have 10 PCs, make sure to schedule early so that you can finish all matches before the participants feel like they want to go home. The last thing you want to happen is your participants getting bored and going home midway.

One thing to keep in mind is that online tournaments are always better for local events. Having players compete online through Discord is the best way to organize an event because it’s easier to schedule matches and you don’t have to invest in equipment. As long as you lay out the rules such as having players stream their games live, you won’t have to worry about players cheating each other at a local event.

2. Tournament Structure & Prizing

The most important thing to keep in mind when you organize LoL tournaments is establishing a proper tournament structure. Determine if you want to do a round-robin or bracket-style tournament beforehand and schedule your games according to that decision. Some tournament formats will take longer than others so you might want to allocate a 2nd or 3rd day (not more) for the event to proceed. Also, make sure every team has a coach!

For prizing, you need to decide before the tournament begins. There should always be a fixed amount, whether it’s cash or RP. If you have a registration fee for your tournament, at least 50% of that should go towards the prize pool. Players aren’t as naive as you think and those who think the tournament organizer isn’t fair in terms of prizing will share their bad experiences with the larger community.

3. Promotion & Registration

Promoting your event is also an important step when you organize LoL tournaments even at a local event. Having people know about your event makes participants more incentivized to win because they’ll feel that the event will come off as more prestigious to the community. This will also give you the chance to attract any sponsors for the event to increase the prize pool and draw in more people to participate in the future.

As a tournament organizer, you should have participants register 1 week in advance but you ideally want them to register at least 2 weeks in advance. Having them pay partial or full registration when they register with a no-full refund policy so that they won’t feel like they can freely bail on your event at the last minute. Constantly check up on your participants to make sure that you can look for replacements in case they leave.

Post Tournament

Once you organize LoL tournaments, it’ll be easy to create future events. Make sure to take photos of your event so that you can share them on your page and give players a good memory of competing and participating in your event. Once the tournament is complete, you need to announce the results on your page with the photos you took of the winning team. Always make your winners feel like they achieved something at your event.

Additionally, review everything that went wrong and went right during the event. Try to think of ways to improve any future tournaments so that the participants and audience will have a better experience. Note the good things you did during the tournament and try to incorporate them during the next event. Also, try to ask around if people enjoyed your event and casually ask if they think that they’ll participate in any future events you might hold.