EDward Gaming (EDG) of China's LPL defeated the defending champion DK of LCK to become the globle history 9th team to win the League of Legends 2021 Finals in Iceland on Nov. 6th, 2021. This is the third S-race championship cup of LPL after IG and FXP. Meanwhile,it's the first S-race championship of EDG team in the history ! Congratulations to EDG and LPL!
This competition is the sixth time that the EDG team has participated in the S-race competition. Before that, the team's best result in this competition was only the top eight. This year, EDG, as the LPL summer champion (No.1 seed team), was in the same group as T1 (former SKT) in South Korea, 100T in North America and DFM in Japan, and finally qualified for second place in the group with four wins and two losses. In the next two knockout rounds, EDG successively competed with its rival RNG and South Korean team Gen. G played all five games and successfully advanced to the final. And meet in the final against DK.
Before the final, it seemed to the outsiders that the defending champion DK still had the advantage. A South Korean AI website predicted the results of the S-race--DK's winning rate was as high as 73.8%, while EDG's winning rate was only 26.2%. At the same time, when 16 commentators from Brazil predicted the result of the match, only one thought EDG would win the championship.
The final, which lasted five games, was thrilling. The game has been watched 350 million times on Bilibili alone; Tencent Video's live stream showed 86 million views; The official live stream on Weibo showed 81.94 million views; Douyu and Huya also enjoy high popularity of live streaming. Offline, there are thousands of spectators gathered in squares and shopping malls to watch the game.
Game 1:EDG recreated the semi-final T1 line-up and ended the game 0-5 with a beautiful team defeat DK, opening the final 1-0.
Game 2: EDG's team fight at a disadvantage, was finally pushed off the Central highlands by DK, the two sides score 1-1 tie.
Game 3: DK finally gets match point with a team fight.
Game 4:EDG stands on the edge of the cliff to withstand the pressure, although Scout's poor condition gives up the position of the dragon soul group, but Jiejie with excellent performance, struggling to rescue, grab the earth dragon soul, expand the advantage, forcing DK to return powerless. EDG came back and both sides entered the final decider.
Game 5:It was very intense. While the Waterdragon Spirit team fights, the EDG team defeats DK. And, in the following team battle, EDG continued to dominate and eventually won the match.
According to data from "China Esports Industry Development Report 2021", the number of esports users in China is expected to reach 425 million in 2021, and the number of core esports fans will reach 92.8 million, making China the largest market in the global esports industry.
More exciting for domestic players is that on Nov.5th, hangzhou 2022 19th Asian Games special press conference, including league of Legends, King of Glory (Asian Games version), Peace Elite (Asian Games version) and other 8 events were officially selected as the official competition of the Asian Games.