EDG, China’s Edward Gaming team, is dominating trending topic lists on Chinese social media this weekend for winning the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds 2021) title. On Sunday, the hashtag “EDG Wins Championship” (#EDG夺冠#) had over 2.6 billion views on social media site Weibo.
One post by the Edward Gaming team (“We are the champions!!!!!”) had over 3,6 million likes.
League of Legends (LoL, 英雄联盟) is an online multiplayer video game developed and published by Riot Games in 2009 in which a team of players has to battle against the opposing team by gaining more strength through the accumulation of items and experience over the course of the game.
Annually since 2011, the American Riot Games hosts The League of Legends World Championship tournament. Over the past decade, LoL world championships have become increasingly successful, contributing to the overall rising popularity of esports.
In China, the League of Legend Championship first became widely known among the general public in 2018 when ‘Invictus Gaming’ (IG) was the first Chinese team ever to win the tournament. The victory became a major trending topic, and videos showing Chinese college dorms going crazy over the IG championship circulated all over social media.
This time, it was the EDG team to win over South Korea with a 3-2 score on November 7 (China time). The LoL World Championship was originally scheduled to take place in Shenzhen, but due to logical issues relating to Covid-19 restrictions, the esports tournament was eventually held in Reykjavík.
Website PCGamer described EDG as “an underdog” in this final, because they had never appeared at a Worlds final before, and also because they were going up against South Korea’s DWG KIA, who already won last year’s Worlds.
The EDG team was established in 2013. The following players played in the Worlds 2021 finals: Flandre (Li Xuanjun 李炫君), Jiejie (Zhao Lijie 赵礼杰), Meiko (Tian Ye 田野), Scout (Korean name Lee Ye-chan 이예찬/李汭燦), and Viper (Korean name Park Do-hyeon 박도현/朴到贤).
This is what it looked like when the Chinese Edward Gaming team (#EDG) won the League of Legends World Championship this weekend. The topic is exploding on Chinese social media, probably biggest esports topic since IG won as the first Chinese team in 2018. #英雄联盟 pic.twitter.com/cxmyXTig90
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) November 7, 2021
The craze over EDG winning was so huge, that some students at a school in Xianyang, Shaanxi province, attempted to change the national flag at the school and instead put up the EDG team flag. According to online reports, local authorities are currently involved and are investigating the matter.
Some online fans condemned the move, saying it only discredit the EDG team.
Meanwhile, the Edward Gaming team is more popular in China than ever before. A Weibo ‘supertopic’ dedicated to EDG has now seen over 4,5 billion views.
Read more about esports in China here.
By Manya Koetse, with contributions by Miranda Barnes
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