The BBC’s move into e-sports for its coverage of the four-day League of Legends World Championship, an online video-gaming tournament at Wembley, proved a major success for the broadcaster.

League-of-legends

BBC Sport for BBC Three

BBC Three attracted more than 137,000 unique users to its coverage of the competition, shortly after the youth-skewing station moved online, drawing on BBC Sport’s proven track record in live events alongside traditional documentary techniques.

Covering e-sports live was a first for the BBC, which hoped to appeal to the 27 million people who play the game every day, with more than 70 million hours of last year’s championships watched by fans across the globe.

In addition to covering the tournament itself, the producers examined the basics of the game, the lives of top professional gamers, the absence of female pro gamers and the importance of YouTube in the community.

The coverage was enhanced by live text commentary alongside the video streaming, curated by gaming experts, with established BBC talent such as Radio 1 Xtra’s Dev Griffin and Julia Hardy joined by gaming stars such as Leigh ‘Deman’ Smith and James ‘Stress’ O’Leary.

The judges said the “brave” commission “ticked every box” and was a “perfect match of content, target audience and broadcaster, which was delivered with a spot-on tone”.

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