League of Legends Worlds 2019: naming the best region after Worlds

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Madrid, Spain – November 2: — during Worlds 2019 Semifinals at Palacio Vistalegre on November 2, 2019 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games) /

League of Legends best regions compared

So now that we have the numbers and a small description of how each team did lets see what all this was for to pick out the best region.

Three regions jump out to me as contenders for the best one are the LEC, LPL, and LCK. The LEC and LCK sent the maximum three teams and all of them made it out of groups and onto the bracket stage. This puts both of those regions as the top performers in category one, though the LPL lags slightly behind with sending three teams but only having two of three advance out of groups.

In the second category – record and winning percentage – the LCK went 27-13 which is a 68% win rate and a strong performance. The LEC finished with a 26-18 record which is a 55 % winning percentage. The LPL went 21-9 which is a 70% win rate and the best winning percentage out of the three.

Note the LPL did play fewer games since they didn’t have to put a team in the play-in stage as well as they played the only games with teams from the same region which went 3-1 in favor of FunPlus Phoenix. So while the LPL won fewer games than the LEC and LCK they have a higher percentage of wins and win category two.

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Category three to determine the best region is how each individual team placed and how well they performed up to expectations based on our ranking list. To help with this I’m going to score each region like this was a cross-country running contest, with the position you finish being how many points you earn (so for example a sixth place finish is six points), you then take the number of members of the team that count for score, which is five to seven usually in a race, but is going to be three in this case and add them up with the lowest total point score being the winner.

The LPL had an11th place finisher, a third place and the champion for a total of15 points, The LEC had the runner-up, sixth, and seventh place teams for a total of 15 points. The LCK had the fourth, fifth, and eighth place teams for a total of 17 points making it a very close race in this scoring system.

The LEC had two of their three teams finish better than expectations with G2 and Splyce, while Fnatic performed well but ended up a couple of spots short of projections. The LPL had FunPlus Phoenix and IG finish better than they were rated, but had RNG place five spots lower than their projection. Finally, the LCK had SKT fail to take the top spot where they were rated, but with Griffin and Damwon both finishing a couple spots ahead of projections they seemed to balance out the region to about as expected.

Overall, it looks like the LEC finished the most spots ahead of their projections and earns the point for category three thanks to this and their low point total from each individual team placing well.

The fourth and final category is the head to head matchups. The LCK went 5-3 against the LPL and 6-8 against the LEC in overall games played. In head to head best of five series the LCK went 1-2 against the LEC and 0-1 against the LPL. The LEC went 9-8 against the LCK and 2-7 against the LPL in games played.

EU did go 2-1 in their series vs the LCK but 0-2 in series against the LPL in the bracket. The LPL finished with a game record of 3-5 against the LCK and 9-3 against the LEC. They went 2-0 against Europe and 1-0 against Korea in the bracket. In terms of who eliminated who in the bracket Korea eliminated one European team, China eliminated one Korean team, and two European teams as well as another LPL team, and Europe eliminated two Korean teams.

When combining what seems like a cluster of those numbers, I feel like the LEC is the better region than the LCK due to them having the better head to head game record, the better series record and for eliminating more Korean teams than Korea did European teams.

However I don’t think the numbers hold up well for the LEC against the LPL. A 3-9 game record and having two teams fall to the LPL in the bracket just makes it seem that the LPL is the better region. The League of Legends World Championship finals, was an LPL vs. LEC matchup and ended in a sweep for the LPL, which with sweeps hard to come by being just the second one of the entire Worlds tournament was quite the feat.

It really put the exclamation point on showing why The LPL is one of the best regions in the world. So for head to head matches my category four I’m giving the point to the LPL.

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So in giving out points for winning the categories, the LCK has one point, the LEC two points and the LPL two points. Yet I feel like with a better head to head performance and the top placing team you have to give it to the LPL. The LEC did benefit from placing a third team into groups and played better than expectations but they couldn’t take home the championship title. For that reason I am crowing the LPL the best region in 2019.

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