| Season 3 World Championship | |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Location: | United States |
| Start Date: | September 15 |
| End Date: | October 4 |
| Administrator: | Riot Games |
| Tournament Format: | 10 team round-robin group stage 8 team single-elimination bracket |
| Venues: | 3 (in 1 host city) |
| Teams: | 14 |
| Purse: | $2,050,000 |
| Champions: | SK Telecom T1 |
| Runner-Up1: | Royal Club |
| Matches: | 63 |
| Stat1 Label: | Highest |
| Stat2 Label: | Highest |
| Previous: | 2012 |
| Next: | 2014 |
The Season 3 World Championship was an esports tournament for the multiplayer online battle arena video game League of Legends. It was the third iteration of the League of Legends World Championship held by Riot Games, and the last iteration not to be formally titled after the year it took place.
SK Telecom T1 defeated Royal Club 3–0 in the finals and took their first championship.
| Region | Path | Team | ID | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting in the Playoff stage | ||||
| China | China Regional Finals Winner |  Royal Club | RYL | |
| North America | NA LCS Summer Champion |  Cloud9 | C9 | |
| South Korea | The Champion Most Circuit Points #1 |  NaJin Black Sword | NJS | |
| TW/HK/MO | TW/HK/MO Regional Finals Winner |  Gamania Bears | GAB | |
| Starting in the Group stage | ||||
| China | China Regional Finals Runner-up | Oh My God | OMG | |
| Europe | EU LCS Summer Champion | Fnatic | FNC | |
| EU LCS Summer Runner-up | Lemondogs | LD | ||
| EU LCS Summer 3rd Place |  Gambit Gaming | GMB | ||
| North America | NA LCS Summer Runner-up | Team SoloMid | TSM | |
| NA LCS Summer 3rd Place | Team Vulcun | VUL | ||
| South Korea | The Champion Most Circuit Points #2 | Samsung Ozone | SSO | |
| Korea Regional Finals Winner | SK Telecom T1 K | SKT | ||
| Southeast Asia | SEA Regional Finals Winner | Mineski | MSK | |
| CIS►Wildcard | Regional CIS Championship ► Winner | GamingGear.EU | GG | |
Culver City and Los Angeles were selected as the host cities for the World Championship.[2]
| Culver City, California | Los Angeles, California | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Group Stage and Quarterfinals | Semifinals | Finals | |
| Culver Sound Studios | Galen Center | Staples Center | |
| Capacity: 1,500 | Capacity: 10,258 | Capacity: 20,000 | |
| Place | Team | Prize money[3] |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | SK Telecom T1 K | $1,000,000 |
| 2nd | Royal Club | $250,000 |
| 3rd–4th | Fnatic | $150,000 |
| NaJin Black Sword | ||
| 5–8th | Cloud9 | $75,000 |
| Gamania Bears | ||
| Gambit Gaming | ||
| Oh My God | ||
| 9–10th | Lemondogs | $45,000 |
| Samsung Ozone | ||
| 11–12th | Team SoloMid | $30,000 |
| Team Vulcun | ||
| 13–14th | GamingGear.EU | $25,000 |
| Mineski |
The 2013 World Championship final was watched over Twitch by over 32 million people, with a peak of 8.5 million concurrent views, a large increase from the 2012 finals of 8.2 million viewers, with 1.1 millions peak concurrent ones. The numbers shattered the previous records for any eSports event. These numbers were much higher than those of other competitor eSports events for Dota 2 and Starcraft 2, the former of which only reached one million concurrent viewers.[4]
Riot's 8.5 million concurrent viewers is on a par with the "more than 8 million" people that watched Felix Baumgartner's jump from the edge of space. Exact figures for streaming events are difficult to ascertain, but All Things D reports that Baumgartner's jump was "web video's biggest event ever."
League of Legends is by far the biggest entity in the pro-gaming sector, regularly outstripping the stream viewer numbers of its major competitors, including Valve's Dota 2 and Blizzard's StarCraft II. In context, Valve's flagship Dota 2 tournament — The International 3 — took place two months before the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship finals and reached one million concurrent viewers.