Riot Games heads to Macau for second TFT Open in December

Returning to convention-style esports

TFT Open format aims to create a broader convention-style event with the 512-player main tournament the anchor the event. Competitors and attendees should expect developer panels, meet and greets, cosplay and more in Macau.

The company first experimented with the TFT Open in Las Vegas in December 2023. While Riot has invested in its spectator experiences for both League of Legends’ and Valorant’s Fan Fests, the TFT Vegas Open was its first open bracket tournament in over a decade.

The event was a major success. The 512 Competitor’s Bundles sold out in seven seconds and an additional 1,000-plus spectators attended the event.

“The reception from the community proved that you didn’t need to have this hyper-competitive tournament format — like a lot of the feedback we’ve been getting — to still have an event that everybody said was their most fun event of all time,” said Sherman. “A lot of our company leadership was at the Vegas Open and it was good to see esports in a new light in one of Riot’s games… I think it’s a great platform for challenging conventions.”

While he doesn’t see the esports industry turning to these events in general, Sherman believes esports is “finding new fruit” in these convention-style events. “I think the reason is because put publishers especially are investing in what players love about the game as a whole, not just the esports component.” 

For its next outing, Riot selected Macau — the world’s largest gambling hub — as the next destination for the format it piloted in Las Vegas. Like its American counterpart, Macau is an ideal tourism and travel hub for an international event.

“Macau is such a great way for us to bring this experience to Asia without alienating players from all over the world,” said Sherman.

Learnings from Vegas

Sherman sees TFT itself and its fans as a major reason why this convention-style format worked. Teamfight Tactics is the most played PC strategy game in the world, but is rarely recognized as such. In addition to its wide appeal within the League of Legends community, top players from other competitive titles like Super Smash Bros. and Pokémon attended the TFT Open.

“Building on the event experience is incredibly important. It’s a little different for TFT because it’s such a broader player pool and we don’t have the same relationship we do with them like in League or Valorant,” said Sherman.

The TFT Vegas Open also helped Riot understand and overcome the hurdles of running such a massive event. These included physical challenges like assembling 512 setups (rather than its standard 10 plus practice rooms) or taking pictures of every competitor for the broadcast and a wide variety of technical issues.

“I’m going to pull back the curtain a little bit, but at the Vegas open, we were still trying to get every PC in the game midnight before event started. We uncovered so many layers of DDoS protection we don’t usually need to worry about with [LoL] Worlds or [Valorant] Champs” said Sherman. 

“TFT uniquely gets a ton of benefits because it’s built into the League client as well. So there’s a whole host of services that were built for League of Legends that just happened to also work for TFT… we were able to repurpose some of the technology from champions queue to get everyone in the game as fast as possible.”

Ultimately, these Champions Queue tools helped the team solve technical challenges that range from adding custom lobbies to TFT and allowing spectators to join mid-match to a friend’s list cap around 315 for a 512-player event.

Iterating and experimenting

Since hosting the TFT Vegas Open, Riot has reflected on why the event worked and how it plans to build on that success.

For the TFT Macau Open, Riot is putting more emphasis on the at-home experience. In particular, the developer plans to create more content to help these in-person experiences transcend online. Sherman specifically cited how cosplay content from the TFT Vegas Open drove engagement.

Additionally, Riot plans to put more emphasis on tying the TFT Macau Open to the launch of Set 13. New sets already encourage players to return to TFT and Macau gives Riot more tools to extend the patch’s freshness.

Beyond the open bracket events, Riot is taking the opportunity to experiment in esports through Teamfight Tactics in other ways.

While fans should be excited for Macau, TFT’s next major tournament is on the world stage at the Esports World Cup. In a first for the game’s competitive history, players will compete as teams of four. This suits the EWC’s team-focused structure and has the advantage of feeling distinct from TFT’s standard solo events like this weekend’s Set 11 championship.

“A major reason why players love TFT is novelty — there’s always something new in the game. And so we also want our esports structure to satisfy that by having mixes of novelty all throughout the year, whether it’s 4v4 or Macau or new formats throughout the regional season,” said Sherman.

Riot’s partnership with the EWC is another evolution of the publisher’s esports approach. Before the EWC and DreamHack Dallas, Riot typically operated its esports programs as a walled garden for more than a decade.

Looking forward, Riot is using the experience of experimenting with TFT to inform its 2XKO esports strategy. “2XKO will need its own very unique strategy but it is very useful as Riot starts to think more about these participation and community-focused events,” said Sherman.

TFT Open Macau Event Information

The upcoming TFT Macau Open will take place from December 13 – 15.

Tickets

Ticket pre sales start September 3, 2024 at at 5 AM PT / 8 AM ET / 2 PM CEST / 8PM GMT+8. Each player’s competitive performance in Season 12 — starting July 31 and ending September 2 at 12:12am Server time — will determine when they can buy the Competitor’s Bundle and its price.

Riot will have more information on where and how to buy tickets closer to the sales date. In addition to securing a spot in the tournament, the Competitor Bundle’s also includes:

• Event themed physical merch including a participation medal and competitor jacket
• In-game skin Chibi from Set 13
• Exclusive in-game emote based on tournament placement

At the TFT Macau Open, Riot will host a variety of side events for competitors and spectators including meet and greets, panels, cosplay and more.

Seeding and Schedule

Riot will initially seed players into groups of eight based on their Set 12, Magic n’ Mayhem ranking. After the first round, players will be re-seeded via snake draft based upon the points they earn throughout the tournament. Players will accumulate points based on their placement in each match, where the first place finisher will earn eight points, etc.

Based on feedback from fans, Riot has updated its TFT Open format with two additional rounds. This change allows the top four finishers in each lobby to advance, rather than the previous top two.

For the Finals, the top 8 players will compete in a checkmate format. The first player to earn 20 points and win a round will crowned the TFT Macao Open Champion.

Tournament Prize Pool

Riot Games is awarding a total prize pool of $300,000 at the event. The top 128 players will walk away with their cut, with the champion pocketing $100,000.