League of Legends generates $1.75 billion revenue for 2020

LOL has been the highest-earning non-mobile free title for Riot Games garnering over 16% Y-o-Y growth

The success of League of Legends has been a key highlight for Riot Games as the title continues to generate substantial revenues for the developer. The massively popular MOBA brought in around $1.75 billion in revenue in 2020, as per data available with intelligence company SuperData. Amid the raging global COVID-19 pandemic, LOL was supposedly the highest-earning, non-mobile free-to-play title over the last year and the sixth highest-earning FTP title overall.

A consistent revenue-grosser

Over the years, Riot has expanded its portfolio including other gaming genres with Legends of Runeterra and Valorant. This however, did not impact the success of LOL and in fact, the game grew its revenue to $1.75 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2019. Tencent’s Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite topped the FTP revenue list, bringing in $2.45 and $2.32 billion respectively. The FTP market as a whole witnessed a rise in earnings by 9% resulting in $98.4 billion revenue for 2020, while games media as a whole earned $139.9 billion, up from $120.1 billion in 2019.

A pan-industry growth trend

The entire games industry grew 12% year-over-year from 2019, with North America and Europe witnessing significant growth momentum both in terms of the number of gamers engaged and people spending money on their preferred brands. Meanwhile, FTP games continued to dominate, generating 78% of the industry’s revenue and accounting for nearly 60% of the Asian market’s total earnings—cumulating to more than $2 billion.

Despite the widespread popularity that has the way of Riot Games as a result of the growing popularity of esports and the increased quality of gaming content, a key challenge faced by the industry is finding a way to monetize those views and get the cash registers ringing more frequently. Sponsorships and advertising deals still make up the vast majority of total revenue, but developers would surely want to cash on the pandemic and its resultant boost provided to online gaming.