Riot Games announced the official launch of the League of Legends Esports (LoL Esports) Global Power Rankings today just in time for Worlds 2024.
Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology, it is a “dynamic, data-driven rankings engine” that interprets and contextualizes a team’s strength within Tier 1 leagues, Riot wrote.
By consolidating and presenting each team’s data, match history, and achievements, fans will be able to see how their favorite teams match up against each other and gain a clearer insight into the competitive LoL Esports landscape.
How does the LoL Esports Global Power Rankings work?
The Global Power Rankings system is built on “an Elo-like model.”
“This system evaluates not only individual team performances, but also the strength of the regions they hail from. The result is a comprehensive and transparent snapshot of the global competitive landscape, updated after every day of play during Worlds 2024,” Riot stated.
The LoL Esports Global Power Rankings Elo metric balances a weighted average between a team’s Elo and their league’s Elo. Officially termed the “Power Score formula”, the team’s Elo and the league’s Elo are weighted at 80% and 20% respectively.
Refined for maximum predictive accuracy, this approach was taken because it’s both straightforward enough for easy comprehension and nuanced enough to address the game’s complexities.
Key features of LoL Esports Global Power Rankings
- Game-based resolution: The model updates after every game in a series of matches. It takes into account every game played during a regional split or international event.
- Contextualized match weighting (K Factors): International events are weighted more heavily than regional events, with knockout matches carrying more significance than group-stage matches. This ensures that high-stakes fixtures have a greater impact on rankings.
- Evaluation windows: A three-year evaluation window for league Elo and a two-year window for team Elo allow the system to balance the impact of roster changes while maintaining a robust sample size of international games.
- Predictive accuracy: The system’s ability to predict match outcomes has been rigorously tested, with results indicating a strong correlation between expected and actual outcomes.
The LoL Esports Global Power Rankings will be featured throughout Worlds 2024 on lolesports.com and during broadcasts.
After the Worlds 2024 final concludes on November 2, 2024, Riot Games will publish the final rankings for year 2024 and start preparing for the 2025 season.
They are already looking ahead at potential improvements for 2025, such as integrating in-game statistics to modify power scores according to match performance, introducing player-centric power rankings to more accurately represent individual contributions, and exploring more detailed K-factors to enhance the system’s accuracy.
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