We’ve teamed up with our partners at Bayes Esports to develop a first-of-its-kind centralized hub that will deliver competitive esports data to professional LoL Esports teams, Riot Games’ partners, and to the community. [Last year, we rolled out the LoL Esports Data Portal][1] to Riot-run professional LoL Esports regions, debuting the private and secure scrim data feature. Now, the LDP also supports community use cases, such as Leaguepedia and Oracle’s Elixir, by providing scalable and sustainable access to data such as match history data, replays, and more. Read on to learn more about our latest project!
How It All Started
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In the beginning, esports at Riot Games was made of a small team doing their best to bring the Riot vision for esports to life, but we also were building it as we went along!
It worked at the time when the esports team was a startup within Riot, but we’ve grown quite a bit since then. As we approached our 11th year of esports, many of those old systems couldn’t keep up with LoL Esports’ continued growth.
Last year, we were faced with a situation where years of work setting up systems to deliver competitive data to our professional teams, partners, and the community was about to fall apart unless we developed a new scalable solution for delivering that data globally.
What is Competitive Data?
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When we say “competitive data,” we are talking about everything you’d ever want to know about what happened in a professional esports match. You may be familiar with match history and replay files, but the competitive data pipeline serves far more detailed data points that power many of our advanced statistics like Baron Power Play and Isolation Deaths.
Competitive data touches every part of the esports ecosystem. Teams use it to scout talent, coach players, and develop meta breaking strategies. Partners and Riot use it to create fan products and experiences. It even powers community sites like Leaguepedia and Oracle's Elixir. Competitive data sits at the core of the esports data ecosystem and is something we have worked hard to provide ever since our humble beginnings in [Phreak’s basement][2].
It Might Not Be Pretty, But It Works
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[1]: https://lolesports.com/article/%EB%B3%B4%EC%95%88-%EB%8D%B0%EC%9D%B4%ED%84%B0%EA%B0%80-%EB%A6%AC%EA%B7%B8-%EC%98%A4%EB%B8%8C-%EB%A0%88%EC%A0%84%EB%93%9C-e%EC%8A%A4%ED%8F%AC%EC%B8%A0-%ED%94%84%EB%A1%9C-%EA%B2%BD%EA%B8%B0%EC%9D%98-%EB%B0%9C%EC%A0%84%EC%97%90-%EA%B8%B0%EC%97%AC%ED%95%98%EB%8A%94-%EB%B0%A9%EB%B2%95/blt141bd300f61de7b1
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMTI1kYG4h0
It was as LoL Esports was just starting to take off that we understood the importance of access to competitive data for coaching, broadcast, and third party platforms. The first form of data distribution was completely manual: a Rioter would download the replays from the Tournament Realm, rename the files, and share with pro teams. This quickly became a problem at the scale esports was starting to operate.
The second iteration involved a heroic team member making sure everyone who needed data had access to it. Working tirelessly, they created the very first automated solution for distributing competitive match history files. This involved a lot of Python code and efficient use of Google Sheets to distribute these files to the teams and sites that needed them. Over the course of multiple seasons, more than 138 leagues and tournaments were served 34,000+ files. It wasn't pretty, it had its issues, but it helped get us where we are today!
The Old Way Is Going Away
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However nothing, not even “beautifully efficient” solutions lasts forever.
This was the [death of Web Match History.][1] The service that powered Web Match History was an unassuming, relatively unknown API called LEGs/ACS. This API was created in the early days of LoL to provide access to Match History files. It was never publicized and never fully supported. Yet, somehow, the community found it anyway, and before long it was not only powering Riot sites and our entire esports data ecosystems, it was being used by many popular fan sites. As the API was becoming harder and harder to maintain, it was clear that LEGs/ACS was living on borrowed time for too long. No more LEGs/ACS History would mean no more LEGs/ACS, which would mean no more scouting, no more coaching, no more meta analysis, no more fan sites.
Introducing the LDP
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We had a choice: give up, or build a better, stronger, faster system. Hence, the LoL Esports Data Portal (LDP) was born. Over the last year, we’ve built a brand new system with our League data partner, Bayes Esports, to power the esports data ecosystem. The LDP is a first-of-its-kind data distribution platform to support pro-teams, partners, and the community. It is the foundation of the future of esports competitive data at Riot Games.
[1]: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/game-updates/turning-off-web-match-history/#:~:text=On%20Sep%207th%20around%2018,a%20new%20service%20for%20it
To make it easy to use, we added a UI, API, and 24/7 support. It's designed to continue to grow with esports. In addition to match history, replays, and our esports-specific telemetry, we are constantly adding new types of data. Last year, we added the scrim data tool for team private access to their scrims data for performance, player evaluation, and coaching. In the works are plans to add automated access for teams to get their player comms.
Fun Facts:
- As of today, the LDP includes data from 95 tournaments covering Riot-run professional and Academy leagues, European Regional Leagues (ERLs), and smaller regional events.
- The amount of data per game the LDP provides is massive, totaling 2,500GB of uncompressed data.
- As of May 2021, we have recorded 14,341 scrim games from more than 150 professional and semi-professional teams across the LoL Esports ecosystem, averaging about 276 games a week.
- LDP also acts as a central repository for data across professional and semi-professional tournaments, enabling our casters, analysts, and community by arming them with the information they need to develop and craft global narratives.
What’s Next
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We can't stop, won’t stop! Our fans, community, and partners have proven time and time again that they are willing to create unique products if given the right tools. Therefore, our effort to make data more accessible with products like the LDP focuses on enabling the long-term growth of the fan experience ecosystem that surrounds professional League of Legends.
We are hard at work on the next phase of the LDP, in which we are planning on opening up data access to the broader community and those with a passion for data. More details to come there, so stay tuned for updates!
About John Knauss, Lead of Competitive Data Programs for Esports at Riot Games
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I built and currently lead the Competitive Data Programs team, which is responsible for the strategy, technology, and partnerships driving how Riot Esports distributes competitive data across the esports ecosystem.
