Being a player who has never shown much interest in using skins during competitions, Faker rarely encourages his fans to spend money on such items. Of course, T1’s Mid Lane fans are always ready to “dig deep” if given the chance. Moreover, recently, Riot launched the Hall of Legends collection to honor Faker. And regardless of how expensive this skin line is in reality, on the day of its release, many gamers as well as professional players and KOLs quickly spent money to fully own the collection with the most expensive version.
However, recently, due to a sponsorship contract, Faker has to participate in promoting his Hall of Legends skin line on livestream platforms in the Chinese market. Even though he only appeared on LPL’s Douyin for about an hour, Faker truly demonstrated his influence even in the “arch-enemy” territory of the LCK. Accordingly, within one hour, Faker’s HoL collection sold nearly 5 million yuan (around 17 billion VND), with 1,154 of the highest-priced versions reaching players’ hands.
With a market that has a large community like China, this revenue is understandable. However, Faker has been a rival of LPL for a long time, yet he is still very much adored here. For those who may not know, Faker is the only Korean player who has never played a day in LPL, yet his Weibo account has nearly 1 million followers. This is also the highest number that a foreign player can achieve without having contributed to the Chinese League of Legends scene. Other foreign players with higher followings than Faker, like TheShy or Doinb, have long been familiar faces and celebrated in the LPL.
Of course, Faker may still not encourage his fans to feel compelled to own the HoL collection at all costs. But perhaps, many fans are also willing to “donate blood” for their idol, especially when this skin line is a limited edition, appearing only once in the present and possibly in the future.