Riot’s Chris Greeley on the Worlds trailers: "There is no budget impact around our feature trailers"

And we’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure that out independently. We’ve tried to figure it out with teams. It’s not a great model for it. I think that’s one of the reasons that multi-tier competition in global football works so well, because of things like sell-on clauses, and there’s a lot of money at most levels of football. And things like minor league baseball in the United States have historically been a very difficult thing to keep healthy from a financial perspective. It’s just an inherent problem in the system. I think we see it in a lot of places.

Do you think there’s a way to salvage it, or is Tier 2 just doomed?

No, I definitely don’t think it’s doomed. We’ve been in the same rough state for 10 to 15 years. Some years it feels better, some years it feels worse. We feel like we’re on a good path to create more of those opportunities. I think WSCI was successful even from a tournament organiser perspective. I think EMEA Masters is successful. There are other points — people watching this are like, well, what about this team in this league, or all the problems that we’re having in other places. We don’t have a global solve right now, but it’s something we’re working on. We haven’t lost hope. We definitely think that there’s a path.

You tried Coach Comms at the Demacia Cup, and you tried them all year in the LCP and a bit in the LCK. What have you learned from those tests? With Riot, a trial usually means something bigger is coming — does that mean we could soon see Coach Comms everywhere?

Honestly, I think it’s probably unlikely. One of the reasons we test things is we just want to see the impact that it will have. We tested Coach Comms this year with leagues that sort of raised a hand. We had talked about it as a larger leadership group, someone had the idea, some folks in the room were like, yeah, it’s a really interesting idea. We talked to some pro teams, we talked to some leagues, and ultimately trialled it out.

I don’t know that it had a big impact one way or the other. We were kind of hoping it would be an entertaining thing for fans — you kind of get this brief look into mid-game strategy for teams, and how pros and coaches are thinking about it. I don’t think it manifested that way. I don’t think we saw competition go up or down. I don’t know that we saw skill levels go up or down. It was interesting, but I don’t know that it’s a long-term play for us. We’re going to keep looking at the data. We haven’t finalised that stuff yet, but from the early stuff I’ve seen, it’s not that exciting.

Before Worlds, you said there’s rarely an international event without visa concerns, and that you’d work with teams, agencies and government contacts so every qualified player could enter the US. In the end, ZUIAN never got his visa, and other players and staff struggled too. How do you explain that, and did you see it coming?

As I said, we always have visa problems. We’ve had some years, not just in the US, where we haven’t been able to get players or staff in. Everyone has their own unique situation, and we’re dealing with national governments, so there’s no easy button here. We were working with politicians in the US, we had a lot of help in getting a lot of folks through the system. That was always the plan.

We ran into one or two issues we ultimately couldn’t solve, through the best efforts of Riot, a US senator, external agencies in the US and in China — a lot of people working on it. Every once in a while you’re going to run into a wall. It is super unfortunate. It’s definitely not where we want it to end up. So ultimately we’re going to keep working through visa processes, and the best thing we can do is build better relationships, or continue to build relationships, with national governments. Some countries are easier than others. Some countries open the door a little bit more for esports, and some not.

The Swiss stage format has been a huge discussion. Some want seeding that better reflects regional strength and team standings, some want a return to groups, some want BO1s gone entirely, and some suggest a points system with BO2s — three points for a win, one for a draw. What’s your assessment, and is the Swiss stage here to stay?

The Swiss stage is here to stay. I mean, that’s an easy one, right? We replaced groups for a reason. You can do GSL groups, where you don’t have meaningless games, but those don’t work in quite the same way — that’s basically just a bracket. The old group stage had a lot of meaningless games. It would be different if it was two teams who had nothing left to play for, essentially putting on a fun show match. But you would sometimes have a team that had nothing to play for playing against a team where the outcome still mattered, and you got really, really messed up, asymmetrical results.

We like Swiss. I think fans like Swiss. The draws have been amazing. I think we had a lot of really great storylines this year, in addition to past years. The format is always something we look at after the year is done. After the first year, in 2023, we changed some of the draw rules, because we didn’t like all of the civil wars that we had right out of the gate. I can’t remember if we had no rematches in year one, but that rule is there as well, for similar reasons — you don’t want to see the same set-up over and over again. So we’re going to take another look at it. It is difficult. I’ve heard Jatt and Vedius and their takes. I bumped into Jatt backstage and we were chatting about it a little bit as well. It’s hard to make the event longer.

Is that also why the quarterfinals and semifinals run straight into each other?

Yeah. We used to do a quarters weekend, then a semis weekend, then a finals weekend. Pulling them together — I was worried that having quarterfinals on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was going to be less exciting for fans, but I think having this straight six-day run worked out really well last year. We’re seeing great hype this year, so we’re going to keep with that. But yeah, we’ll always take a look at Swiss at the end of the year. I know with Fearless, having best-of-ones feels weird, right? Why put Fearless in if you’re going to go to best-of-ones? We’re trying to balance how you keep the tournament exciting, how we get to watch every team play, and how we keep Swiss from turning into two weeks. Those are the kinds of things we’re trying to work for.

The pre-match trailers are a big part of what makes Worlds feel prestigious — the storylines, the narratives, the history of the teams... This year it felt like one or two lines per player and a few shots. Was the budget cut here, and if so, why?

No. No budget impact around our feature trailers. I think the team took a different creative approach. It does not appear that fans appreciate that different creative approach. I totally get that. The team is well aware of it. We’re going to dig in on that and figure out.

So that was not a budget reason at all?

No, there are no cuts there. I saw something this morning that after yesterday’s trailer, people were like, “oh, now Riot had to go make a trailer for all three days and they’re slapping it together.” Which is the weird thing, right? Because I understand that yesterday’s trailer was more of a “here’s the whole story of the quarterfinals” without focusing specifically on the Top Esports and IG match. The trailer that we got today was focused on the LYON–Gen.G match, and the trailers we’ll have for the next few days are focused on those matches. But that was always the plan.

We try stuff sometimes. Obviously fans looked at the trailer yesterday and said we didn’t get the narrative and storylines We understand that frustration, we take it back, and we’re going to make it part of our process as we go through and figure out what content strategy looks like for all of our events next year. It’s sometimes a really unsatisfying answer when we’re like, we did a thing, fans didn’t like the thing, we’re going to try to do better in the future. But it’s about the most honest answer I can give you.

And someone like Phil Choi — was it a deliberate decision not to run him back this year? I know he and his team made the Champions' Final teaser as well.

We’ve got a bunch of different creative partners. Sometimes we cycle through. You just kind of want to get a different look on something. I’ve heard the fans’ frustrations on that too. So it’s all registered.

Riot has invested a lot into esports in the early days — during the spring of esports and gaming in general. Maybe even a bit too much, which is kind of public knowledge at this point. If LoL Next launches someday, would Riot invest more again in marketing and in esports?

Yeah, I guess so. It’s a big hypothetical. But the budget for League esports isn’t set based on the number of people playing League. We haven’t seen giant fluctuations. I think we have done our best to cut down — getting rid of a week between quarters and finals helps us save some money, and some of that is invested back into other places in the show, but some of it we invest into other parts of the ecosystem, or just other places at Riot. We haven’t had discussions where it’s like, “hey, you have to find $10 million in savings, go cut a bunch of stuff.” It doesn’t work like that.

League Next: Everything You Need to Know

If there were big moments in League, the company would want to invest in those things. But I still want to be rational. It’s not like, hey, let’s go pour a bunch of money back into a thing. I think that sets a bad signal to teams on their own spending. We’re trying to make a really great competition that’s really fun to watch. I think we have a pretty good balance right now. I’m obviously biased, but I like where we’re at.

On Valorant, team-related digital marketing is booming a bit. Could LoL Next also open the door to more in-game digital content for teams, something that could help them be more sustainable?

We changed the business model to focus more on digital, and I think we’re at a fine place with that. We’re certainly not doing the numbers that Valorant is doing right now, but I think there’s room for improvement. We talk to the game team a lot about what fandom looks like inside the game. It’s an inherently different game: in Valorant, everybody needs a gun skin, right? You’re all running the same stuff. When we make skins or chromas in League, if you’re not a midlane player or a Braum main, or if you don’t like Sion or never want to play him, you have no reason to buy the skin or the chroma.

What do you think of a Rift cosmetic, for example?

I think that stuff’s cool. We’ve pitched all sorts of stuff to the game team, and the game team have been great partners. I was in meetings today with folks from the game team and everybody had Worlds on. I think everybody really appreciates what’s going on here. I think folks feel invested, and there’s a really big desire to bring more products to fans that help them express their fandom. That’s really the core goal of esports cosmetics in the game: how do we help folks show that fandom.

Do you think someday it will happen, that we’ll have more ways to help teams with that kind of thing?

Sure, I hope. Yeah.

Looking back at 2026, can you give me one success and maybe one failure for LoL Esports?

I focus a lot more on the stuff that goes wrong than the stuff that goes right. Success: I thought First Stand went pretty well this year with moving to eight teams. I know there was criticism about venue size — maybe that could be my small failure — but I think it helped us get boots on the ground in Brazil and get those pieces going. I think WSCI and Demacia Cup, and a lot of our third-party events. The biggest success maybe has been the Home Grounds programme. So whether that’s Home Grounds in Korea, or road trips, or the Home Ground in NA, campus takeovers — we had a lot of really great momentum from our team partners who were able to help bring shows and more experiences directly to fans, and that stuff felt really good this year.

In terms of failures, we make lots of little mistakes all the time that we certainly get called out on. I think the one that no one really talked about, that we’ve talked about a lot internally, is that we did have some really good third-party events: EWC qualifiers happened all over the world, ENC qualifiers happened, even WSCI and Demacia Cup and the KeSPA Cup. I don’t know that we did enough on the Riot global side to put a bright spotlight on those things and make sure people knew they were going on, and how and where to watch. So we worked really hard with third parties to create competition, and we missed the step where we really helped people find them and enjoy them. It’s definitely on the list of stuff we want to make better for next year.

A last word?

I hope everyone’s tuning into Worlds and enjoying it. Thank you.