Company of the Year
A Friday night in Madison Square Garden. The crowd was screaming for blood.
AND THE USHERS and cotton-candy vendors had probably never felt so confused. In the center of the New York City arena, two teams of five indoorsy-looking men sat at computers, facing one another. With their headsets clamped on and swivel chairs pushed in, they resembled grandiose telemarketers—one side dressed in spiffy red-and-white varsity jackets, the other in long-sleeve black crewnecks with white tiger logos on the chest. As they typed and clicked, a chaotic scene unfolded on the gargantuan screens above them: A monk, an archer, and a swashbuckling lady assassin were closing in on a cyborg.
An instant later, bullets and arrows rained down. The roaring crowd was merciless. Gladiatorial. They wanted this cyborg’s head. “That’s gonna be a kill for Rox Tigers!” boomed the announcer. Thirteen minutes later, the red-and-white team’s base exploded in a swirl of smoke and light—“Rox Tigers answer back with game 2!”—and the two sides retired to their locker rooms, each man rubbing hand warmers to keep blood flowing to his fingers.
Welcome to League of Legends, a team-based online game, and the raging, addicted, electrifying, vain, oddly beautiful, absurdly lucrative, and often bewildering world that swirls around it. If you’ve never heard of League of Legends or the company that makes it, Riot Games, you’re not alone. You probably aren’t a guy between the ages of 16 and 30, either. Every month, more than 100 million gamers play LoL, as its fans call it. While it’s free to download and play, devotees can purchase extra characters—champions, in LoL-speak—and buy them virtual clothing, known as skins, and plenty of other decorative stuff. This year, those virtual goods will yield nearly $1.6 billion in sales for Riot, estimates SuperData, which tracks in-game spending. Riot also sells corporate sponsorships, real-life merchandise, and streaming rights for its professional sports league. In 2015, investors swooped in to buy stakes in teams and purchase slots in the league to build their own squads. Newly minted pro LoL team owners include Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, Hollywood producer and Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Peter Guber, AOL co-founder Steve Case, life coach Tony Robbins, and owners of the Philadelphia 76ers.
“One day, there will be a Super Bowl of e-gaming,” says Leonsis, who co-owns Team Liquid, a portfolio of e-sports teams based in L.A. and the Netherlands. “Whenever I get the reports with the [League of Legends viewership] numbers, I almost do a double-take. In size and scope, it’s mainstream media already.”
Each December, Inc. picks a Company of the Year—one that defies
