Elden Bling.
Riot has announced that it has entered a longterm partnership with the luxury jeweller Tiffany & Co. to make the League of Legends World Championship Trophy. The Summoner's Cup, as it is called, has been redesigned by the venerable New York firm, and will be fully shown off for the first time on August 29 on various Riot social channels (you can see a partial image below).
Tiffany & Co. is a famous longstanding jewellery brand, headquartered in New York City and founded in 1837 by the jeweller Charles Lewis Tiffany. Over its history the company has not only flogged a lot of diamond engagement rings, but branched-out into other high-end goods and operates hundreds of stores worldwide. Tiffany & Co. has an old-world cachet as well as having designed plenty of more traditional sporting trophies, and first worked with Riot on something of a trial run in redesigning the Chinese LoL league's Silver Dragon Cup last year.
"The Summoner’s Cup is a symbol of greatness in esports and the crowning achievement in League of Legends," says Riot's LoL esports lead Naz Aletaha. "[...] Tiffany & Co is a storied brand and the preeminent designer of the world's greatest sports trophies. We’re honored to partner with them to celebrate our past, present, and future World Champions.”
The press release also has numbers! The new Summoner's Cup is made of sterling silver, weighs 44 pounds and stands at around 27 inches tall. Tiffany's designers spent four months working on it and 'expert artisans' spent 277 hours crafting it at a hollowware workshop in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
"We are excited to continue our partnership with League of Legends esports" said Tiffany's Alexandre Arnault, while thumbing through a wad of hundred-dollar bills. I made up the bills. "Creating the Summoner’s Cup is another important moment for Tiffany in the world of esports and an exciting new chapter in our 160-year legacy handcrafting sports trophies."
The League of Legends World Championship returns to North America this Autumn for the first time since 2016, with a multi-city tour format. Qualifying rounds begin in late September with the Worlds Final taking place on November 5 in San Francisco. The Worlds event is serious business, and grows its enormous audience every year: the 2021 Finals match averaging more than 30 million viewers a minute and over 73 million peak concurrents.
In the wider LoL landscape, Riot is still working on a long-term goal to "slow the pace of combat" in the game, and also recently added all League champions and Valorant agents to Game Pass. The future for Riot looks incredibly bright, and things like this trophy are a bit of well-deserved showing off.
