The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) announced Tuesday that it had released the first batch of esports merchandise for the 19th Hangzhou Asian Games, featuring League of Legends, Peacekeeper Elite, and Honor of Kings. All three esports titles are owned by Chinese game publisher Tencent, and the other five non-Tencent titles—Dota 2, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, FIFA, Hearthstone, and Street Fighter V—were not included in this batch.
In 2021, OCA first announced that the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games would feature eight esports titles as official medal events. It was supposed to be held in September of 2022, but the event was delayed for one year due to the global pandemic. The Hangzhou Asian Games will be held in Hangzhou in September of this year.
In addition, it’s not clear whether Hearthstone will still be included in the official titles of Hangzhou Asian Games due to the termination of the partnership between NetEase and Hearthstone developer Activision Blizzard in January. Hearthstone would be the only title that Chinese game publisher NetEase could involve in Hangzhou Asian Games.
Currently League of Legends esports merchandise has been outselling Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite on Chinese e-commerce Taobao. To see the merchandise being offered, check out this twitter post.
Editor’s note: This post was edited after being published to add a link to social media.