AWS teams up with Riot Games to Reimagine Esports Experiences
AWS and Riot Games have teamed up to transform how Riot's Esports content is created and distributed in the cloud and reimagine how fans can experience League of Legends, VALORANT, and League of Legends: Wild Rift Esports events through AWS' first-ever data analytics integration for esports broadcasts.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Riot Games is the company behind leading global e-sports properties League of Legends (LoL), VALORANT, and Wild Rift. In July 2022, Riot Games announced they were going all-in on AWS , focused on powering Riot’s infrastructure including their new global content factories that publish Riot’s esports, music production, analytics, statistics, and animation. Other possible workloads include leveraging AWS instances to create a future slate of cloud-based on-demand and live content, and to use AWS to power the build-out of Riot’s cloud-first production facilities based in Dublin, APAC, and Seattle.
Riot Games Teams Up with AWS to Reimagine Esports Experiences through Esports Broadcast Stats, Power Rankings, and More
LOS ANGELES—July 18, 2022— Riot Games and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have teamed up to transform how Riot’s esports content is created and distributed in the cloud. Riot is the first company to use AWS’s data analytics integration for esports broadcasts to reimagine how fans experience League of Legends (LoL), VALORANT, and League of Legends: Wild Rift events. As part of this global collaboration, Riot has selected AWS as its official Cloud Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Machine Learning (ML), Cloud Deep Learning (DL), and Cloud Services provider.
“Riot Games has a long-term vision to bring joy to billions of fans around the world through our esports, and we’re extremely excited to work with AWS to level up the Riot Esports experience,” said John Needham, President of Esports at Riot Games. “The wide-ranging solutions and expertise of AWS will enhance Riot Games’ esports broadcasts and engage esports fans worldwide. From reimagining how fans view our events and content, to interacting with other players, AWS unlocks endless opportunities for Riot to shape the future of sport.”
NEW WAYS TO EXPERIENCE ESPORTS
Riot currently leverages AWS’s services across its games to reinvent how they design and deploy content to help provide players the best possible game experience. Now, Riot is working with AWS to enhance its global esports event broadcasts throughout each competitive season for LoL Esports, the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT), and Wild Rift Esports. Similar to the in-depth statistics provided to major global sports leagues, Riot will use AWS’s broad portfolio of cloud capabilities to provide fans with the following new insights and experiences:
● First-ever AWS esports stats: Riot and AWS will introduce “Stats powered by AWS” during esports broadcasts that will appear before, during, and after Riot’s various global esports broadcasts to educate and inform fans on key data points that are helping drive a team towards victory. Fans will be able to vote on which esports stats will be developed first, which will then debut during the broadcasts of VALORANT Champions in September 2022 and the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) this fall.
● AWS Global Power Rankings: Using AWS’s analytics capabilities to review competitive gameplay, Riot will launch “AWS Global Power Rankings”. This will create near real-time rankings of the top pro teams around the world in LoL Esports, VCT, and Wild Rift Esports that will be displayed on-screen during game play.
● Pick’em powered by AWS: Esports fans will be able to participate in bracket challenges throughout the competitive season and win prizes for correctly selecting the teams that make it to each championship event. Built on AWS’s machine learning technologies, “Pick’em powered by AWS” will introduce new ways for fans to make team selections based on tournament data and compete for prizes.
Power Rankings and/or Pick’em will be a featured project this fall during a hackathon event hosted by Riot and AWS where fan-created teams will build systems that could be adopted by each sport. Riot and AWS will co-develop an initial build of the platform and then provide participants with capabilities from AWS and data from Riot to build out and optimize the solution to power the esports statistics.
GLOBAL PRODUCTION FOR A GLOBAL FANBASE
Riot and AWS share a vision of bringing esports to fans no matter where they live, how they watch, or what language they speak. To achieve this, Riot is introducing Project Stryker, a series of cloud-first remote broadcast centers (RBC) that leverage AWS technologies. These facilities will support Riot’s current and future ambitions to reimagine the entertainment experience across numerous areas in addition to esports and analytics/stats like music production, animation, and game development.
These solutions will be scalable to meet the growing needs of their fans, while ushering in a new era of esports content production. Built on strategically placed RBCs around the world, Riot Games will use a 50,000 square-foot facility in Dublin and a second facility in the greater Seattle area that will come online later this year, to produce and support live content anywhere in the world at any time of day, regardless of where the event is taking place. As part of this collaboration, AWS will have the exclusive naming rights of each remote broadcast center.
GROWING RIOT AND AWS RELATIONSHIP
“Our collaboration with Riot Games elevates the entire esports landscape,” said Matt Garman, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Global Services at AWS. “This is a win, win, win for Riot, AWS, and most importantly fans. Tournament viewers and teams can now see in real time how different lanes, weapons, and abilities could determine who will become champions, similar to the stats used in other sports broadcasts. We look forward to working with Riot to create more immersive entertainment experiences and bring engaging esports content to billions of fans worldwide.”
For more information on how Riot works with AWS, please visit aws.amazon.com/sports/riot, and for more on Riot Games’ growing entertainment portfolio, please visit riotgames.com.
ABOUT RIOT GAMES
Riot Games was founded in 2006 to develop, publish, and support the most player-focused games in the world. In 2009, Riot released its debut title, League of Legends, to worldwide acclaim. League has gone on to be the most-played PC game in the world and a key driver of the explosive growth of esports. With League in its second decade, Riot is continuing to evolve the game while delivering new experiences to players with Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, VALORANT, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Riot Forge, and multiple work-in-progress titles. Riot is also expanding the world of Runeterra through multimedia projects across music, comic books, board games, and Arcane, its popular animated series. Founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, and led by CEO Nicolo Laurent, Riot is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and has 3,000+ Rioters in 20+ offices worldwide.
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