Riot Reveals League of Legends Esports Global Power Rankings

LoL Esports Global Power Rankings revealed by Riot Games and AWS. Image credit: Riot Games

Riot Games announced Thursday the League of Legends Esports Global Power Rankings in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This new data-driven rankings engine that highlights statistics for tier-1 teams in the LoL esports ecosystem will officially launch with Worlds 2024, the company said Thursday.

The Global Power Rankings aims to provide data for all Tier-1 League of Legends teams worldwide by evaluating individual team performances, and the strength of the regions they compete in. This “model” will be updated on a daily basis, Riot says, during Worlds 2024. The Global Power Rankings uses what Riot describes as a “blended Elo metric,” using a weighted average between a team’s Elo and their league’s Elo—Elo and league Elo are weighted at 80% and 20%, respectively. 

Key features, according to Riot’s announcement: 

Game-based Resolution: The model updates after every game in a series of matches. Meaning we take every game played during a regional split or international event into account.

Contextualized Match Weighting (K Factors): International events are weighted more heavily than regional events, with knockout matches carrying more significance than group-stage matches. This ensures that high-stakes fixtures have a greater impact on rankings.

Evaluation Windows: A three-year evaluation window for league Elo and a two-year window for team Elo allow the system to balance the impact of roster changes while maintaining a robust sample size of international games.

Predictive Accuracy: The system’s ability to predict match outcomes has been rigorously tested, with results indicating a strong correlation between expected and actual outcomes.

Looking ahead, Riot said in its announcement that it has plans to further enhance this new ranking system, including incorporating in-game stats to adjust power scores based on match performance, introducing player-based power rankings, and exploring “more granular K-factors to further refine the system’s accuracy.”

The Global Power Rankings will be featured during Worlds 2024 on lolesports.com and during broadcasts. Following the World Final on Nov. 2, Riot will publish the final rankings for 2024 and prepare the Global Power Rankings for the 2025 season.