Chinese club’s global e-sports win a boost to gaming community

Chinese e-sports club Invictus Gaming (iG) beat European team Fnatic in a 3-0 sweep to claim China’s first world championship in League of Legends (LOL), in Inchon, South Korea, on Saturday.

Invictus Gaming was the second seed from the LOL Pro League (LPL), following the favored team, Royal Never Give Up (RNG).

Their victory soon became the headline on most Chinese social media platforms.

A great number of e-sports fans congratulated the team right after the first triumph in eight years.

In last year’s tournament, which was held in Beijing National Stadium, the South Korean team won. However, this year, the Chinese team took the revenge on South Korea’s home turf.

League of Legends was developed by US firm Riot Games, which was acquired by Tencent, China’s internet giant.

In addition to the team, iG’s sponsor, Wang Sicong also went viral on China’s Twitter-like Weibo after the victory. Wang is the son of one of China’s richest men, Wang Jianlin.

Wang Sicong’s love for video games motivated him to invest in the whole e-sports industry early. He started providing financial support to iG in 2011.

Before iG was founded, the average monthly salary of professional player used to be 1,500 to 3,000 yuan ($218-435). Wang vowed to award each player a million yuan if they could win the championship, local media company zjol.com reported.

The revelry in the gaming community of China reflects the country’s booming e-sports industry.

According to Penguin Intelligence, a data analysis consultancy under Tencent, the number of e-sports players in China reached 50 million in 2017, with the total market size over 5 billion yuan.

The publicity director of the Korea e-Sports Association, surnamed Kim, told Chinese technology media company 36Kr that the e-sports market size of China is at least five times that of South Korea. He noted the gap of e-sports between the two countries is shortening gradually.