- “I always watch the same movie before important matches”
- "Which is it?"
- “Scarface”
Víctor Lirola, better known by the name of Flakked in the League of Legends community, spoke these words to close the press conference prior to the final of the Super League, on April 1st. A small wall of journalists dressed in cell phones, cameras, and notebooks formed a semicircle around the player. The questions thrown by the information professionals seemed to come directly through a telephone wire from some sports newsroom eager to go digital. Flakked, from the Heretics team, took the place of the star and, with sobriety, dared to assess the game that was to come. Behind the wall of inquisitors thirsty for information, 1,800 plastic chairs arranged like the pews in a church stretched the length and breadth of the multipurpose room of the Zaragoza Auditorium.
There was no one but a few dozen workers doing maintenance work. It caught my attention that each player's position was completely personalized with their keyboard, a different mouse for each one and their own mouse pad. From the top of the stage, the views were breathtaking. It's lucky that the players have a screen in front of them while they compete and don't see how 3,600 eyes analyze their every move, I thought.
Before Flakked, it had been the turn of David Martínez, Supa for the friends of the scene. The Movistar Riders shooter seemed completely willing to play Tony Montana if necessary. “We are going to win and it is going to be incredible”, he said before the microphones a couple of hours before the game. His words were clear and concise, with no room for doubt. At that moment, before the empty chairs and the technicians and the workers, confidence could be confused with pride. The League of Legends Super League final could well be considered a referendum between Flakked and Supa, rather than a match between the Heretics and Movistar Riders. The two players, apart from the cup, were playing for the title of best shooter in Spain. But, before going any further, a bit of context:
The League of Legends Super League is the most important electronic sports competition in Spain. It is organized by the Professional Video Game League, a Mediapro Group company, in collaboration with Riot Games, the company responsible for the video game in question: League of Legends. To keep it simple: two teams of five players face off on a map divided into three lanes. Each team has its base in a corner of the map and its objective is to destroy the enemy's. This, roughly speaking, is League of Legends or any video game of the MOBA genre. As in soccer or basketball, each member of the team occupies a specific position and the star is usually the shooter, the player in charge of doing the maximum possible damage to the opponent. He is the one who has the most goals to score, go. Flakked arrived in Zaragoza being the MVP of the Super League and having won the last competition at a European level. Supa, on the other hand, entered the auditorium wanting to conquer the world, prove his worth and win the cup for himself and his team, the Movistar Riders.
-"I want what I deserve" – Tony told Manny in Brian de Palma's film.
-"And what do you deserve to be given, huh, Tony?"
-"The world, boy, with everything it contains."
The grand finale was scheduled for six in the evening, but everything had started a few hours before, at noon. We reached the Zaragoza auditorium on foot and, in the distance, the noise of an entertainer could be heard who, as a child, was never taught that it is wrong to swear. "I shit on everything, you're already screwing me," he said while my friend and I took the wrong door and entered the VI Aragonese Dental Congress. I was dressed in the typical outfit of a poor ragpicker with my oversized T-shirt and my Bershka pants, so one of the hostesses quickly cut us off to point us in the right direction.
- "You have to go out here and turn right, the video game is on the other side of the building."
- "They could have put up a sign or something" - my friend commented sardonically.
As expected, the video game thing was indeed where the screaming was coming from. It was a few minutes past one in the afternoon and the activities had been going on for an hour. It looked like the fair of a town whose mayor is Elon Musk or someone like that. There was a virtual reality booth, a raffle, a Nerf shooting gallery, and even one of these rides where you have to hit a sensor with a hammer to raise a marker and win prizes. Each activity with its corresponding sponsor. But there were no candy apples or cotton candy: almost everyone had a blue tin in their hands. "Now we have become more sustainable," said one of the LVP officials with a can of Solán de Cabras in hand. From Red Bull and energy drinks to canned water, how things and sponsors change. It is seen that cans are easier to recycle than plastic bottles and it is important to take care of the planet, or so they told us.
This happened inside the enclosure, behind a black cloth screen that separated the attractions from the 1,800 empty seats, the stage and the screens. Outside, in the Plaza de Miguel Merino, former mayor of the city, hundreds of people lined up under the sun to greet influencers and commentators from the world. The CEO of the LVP, Jordi Soler, was very clear: “today is not just a final, it is a League of Legends party”. And he was right, the atmosphere was really festive. The entertainer shouted into the microphone while he interacted with the boys who were queuing up and some girls dressed as characters from the game posed next to a giant inflatable doll and took photos with some of the attendees. Saving the distances, the Miguel Merino square was a very small thematic Manga Hall and only starring League of Legends. The fair closed at three in the afternoon, just three hours before the start of the grand finale. Most of the attendees left the venue, while a few, who had probably come in BlaBlaCar from other cities such as Madrid or Barcelona, sat on the ground to eat some sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil. "We are here for a 'no eggs', we warm up," said one.
On the terraces of the bars in the square – although calling Miguel Merino's concrete floor a square is too daring, “it looks like the back of a fairground”, said my friend, who had decided to speak the language of truth – LVP workers, technicians, influencers and members of the finalist teams ate and drank while waiting to return to work. By mid-afternoon, the bars had emptied and the queue to enter the auditorium crossed the borders of the concrete until it reached Luis Bermejo street. A small group stood out for their curious headbands with cat ears:
- "We are celebrating a bachelor party, this one here is getting married" - pointed out one of the friends.
- "I have to take advantage now, that my girlfriend doesn't like lol and, when I get married, I'll leave it" - said the lucky man, aware that leaving League of Legends is an arduous task.
In the distance, in the queue, other boys:
- "I played, but I left it in time"
- “I have left him so many times…”
Everyone likes to complain when things are done wrong, but when everything flows and goes like silk, it is also important to emphasize that. The 1,800 attendees entered without much inconvenience to occupy their numbered plastic chairs. In the background, an orchestra with trumpets and drums reminded us that this auditorium was not just a final, it was a fair, "a League of Legends party." Those previous hours, as in any self-respecting sporting event, were also used to make predictions and cheers. The favorites were the Heretics, who had just won the previous edition of the Super League and the last European competition. Almost everyone expected a victory for those from Flakked, albeit tight. The final was played to the best of five and most of the pools bet on 3 to 1 or even 3 to 2. In fact, for the LVP, this last scenario would have been the ideal. The longer a final lasts, the better the cumulative audience results and the more enjoyable attendees who sold out the event in less than 24 hours.
- "We have to exceed 50,000 simultaneous viewers, which is the number reached by the French," joked an LVP worker.
Reality ended up overwhelming and surpassing any prediction, at least in terms of time and spectacle. The number of viewers is another matter. The first map – a total of three were played, the maps are like sets in tennis – started a little late due to technical problems, but the event was once again adapted to the planned schedule thanks to the great speed with which Movistar Riders prevailed over the Heretics. The average duration of a League of Legends game is around 45 minutes, this first map lasted less than half an hour. Supa's words resounded in my mind as I watched the show from the stands reserved for the press, at the back of the auditorium. “We are going to win and it is going to be incredible”, I had it engraved on fire and written down in my notebook. I took it out of my pocket and underlined the sentence.
The end of the second map took me by surprise, I confess. After the mandatory half hour break, the second game was over in just over 20 minutes. Again in favor of Movistar Riders. Flakked's last words before starting to play pointed out that "the hesitation of Movistar Riders could take its toll on them", but no one in the auditorium seemed to remember them. In fact, the last sentence pronounced by Supa continued to resonate, in the same vein as the press conference: "I know that Flakked has been the MVP of the season, but I want him to prove it to me today." And he wasn't getting it. Neither he nor the Heretics, who, with their morale sinking, had to fight the third game to maintain any chance of victory.
Between map and map, there was a live request for a hand. The League of Legends party, a village fair... What better place to declare your love in public? I don't know if this moment served to calm things down a bit, but it's always nice to see. It was approaching nine at night and the party had started at 12 noon. If the Heretics now won this game, the final could easily be dragged out until midnight. For the LVP this scenario would have been ideal, to be able to keep the party open and accumulate desire and spectators with a close 3 to 2. But the simplest solution prevailed and Okham's razor pierced the last hopes of the Heretics. Movistar Riders took the cup home with an overwhelming 3-0 victory in the fastest final in the history of the Super League and without ever giving up.
-"I always watch the same movie before important matches"
-"Which is it?"
-“Scarface”
-"And because?"
-"Well, one day I saw it and I won five games in a row, it's totally superstitious, but for now it works for me"
Brian de Palma's Scarface footage lasts 170 minutes. Movistar Riders needed just 74 minutes to take the cup home and seal the final. Supa finished with 32 kills – yes, officially in-game they are called that – behind him to Flakked's 11. And the statistics were not good for the LVP either, which did not reach the 50,000 viewers of the French competition and was left with a maximum peak of 41,698 simultaneous viewers. Jordi Soler had already been repeating it throughout the afternoon: “after Covid, face-to-face events are essential” and added that “the future is to hold more events and with more people”. The streaming fever is ending and, in fact, Twitch's viewership has fallen, overall for the entire platform, by 10% in the last year.
The 1,800 attendees paraded between the plastic chairs back to the Miguel Merino square. Behind their backs they left hundreds of half-deflated plastic tubes, applauders call them, and, of course, presumably ecological and biodegradable. You have to be sustainable. While, in the background, the orchestra exchanged songs from Imagine Dragons with its drums and trumpets. I watched the rivers of people from the top of the stairs that led to the entrance to the VIP area of the auditorium, I put my headphones on and remembered the words of Flakked and Supa. I was thinking about the end of Scarface and the massacre at Tony's mansion and trying to draw from there some moral or some vein to follow to write this chronicle. The Saigon Tobacconist, by Los Chikos del Maíz, was ringing on my cell phone, and I was going down the stairs to the sound of...
"And no, I'm not the Cuban worm
Who plays Al Pacino in Scarface?
I am the armed Cuban
Who aims and shoots the Yankee in the Bay of Pigs”.
