Major League of Legends tournaments around the world have largely passed the halfway mark of the group stage, and we have a clearer picture of the names competing for domestic championships or the ticket to this year’s World Championship. Notably, among the six major leagues worldwide, only Cerberus Esports from VCS has maintained an unbeaten record.
Just a few hours ago, ESPN, the giant in sports broadcasting, released the global team rankings after the first half of the group stage, which has received a lot of backlash from the audience. The outrage stems from two reasons: one is the excessive bias towards Western teams, and the other is that ESPN has significantly undervalued the Korean teams, including T1 led by ‘Chairman’ Faker. The specific rankings are as follows:
1. TOP Esports
2. Victory Five
3. MAD Lions
4. DragonX
5. Cloud9
6. Rogue
7. Damwon Gaming
8. FunPlus Phoenix
9. Invictus Gaming
10. JD Gaming
It is perhaps not surprising that TOP Esports is considered the strongest team in the world, as they are charging towards the top spot in LPL after the group stage with an incredibly dominant performance. However, as mentioned above, the bias towards Western teams is too great, and ranking MAD Lions higher than teams like DragonX, Damwon Gaming, and FunPlus Phoenix is hard to accept. Moreover, T1 falling out of the top 10 only adds to the dissatisfaction.
I can’t believe there are still people who believe in this ranking.
Actually, ESPN is the most popular in sports.
True, but their rankings are just garbage.
It’s quite clear that people are reading just to criticize.
How can they leave G2 and T1 out of the top 10? FunPlus Phoenix at 8th, Cloud9 at 5th? What the hell is this?
It’s ridiculous that they decided T1 is 14th.
It can be said that controversial rankings like ESPN’s will sooner or later occur because League of Legends lacks a point system to accurately rank teams worldwide. More precisely, League of Legends does not need this because, essentially, the ultimate goal of tournaments is the championship. Whether a team is ranked 1st or 10th is not as important as whether they have a title or not.
