With the end of the 2024 League of Legends World Championship, Riot’s official ranking has already been updated and, even with Faker’s recent T1 title, the South Korean team was unable to reach the top of the table. But then you ask yourself, how did this happen? Fragster will explain to you what made Riot not consider T1 as the best League of Legends organization in the world in its official ranking!
The current World Champion, who enchanted everyone in an insane Bo5 series against the Chinese BLG, has a total of five world titles in its trophy cabinet. All of them, of course, counted on the greatest player in the history of League of Legends, Faker.
But if T1 is the World Champion, why is it in second place in Riot’s ranking?
Well, to start the explanation, we need to say that the current leader of the Riot Games ranking is the 2024 Worlds runner-up, BLG, by 22 points. It may seem contradictory, but there is a point to it all.
The ranking does not evaluate the entire history of League of Legends, but only the year in which it is being played. In other words, it is an annual ranking. In this criterion, BLG had a “better” year than T1, even though they did not lose the World Championship to the South Korean team.
In 2024, BLG was the champion of the first stage of the LPL, runner-up of the MSI (eliminating T1), champion of the second stage of the LPL and runner-up of the World Championship (losing to T1).
The South Korean team, T1, achieved the following positions in 2024: runner-up of the first stage of the LCK, third place in the MSI, fourth place in the second stage of the LCK (almost not qualifying for the World Championship) and champion of the World Championship.
How does Riot calculate team rankings?
Therefore, although the World Championship was a very significant achievement for T1, the South Korean team’s year overall was worse. Another factor that contributes to the ranking is what Riot calls “opponent strength.” Last year had an influence on this, as did the definition of the “League Strength” number, but this only served to make things more difficult for T1.
Because of the high opponent strength in all 2024 math, T1 finishing third at MSI and fourth in the South Korean championship hurt the team even more, because the result was seen as something unexpected, considering that the team was seen as the favorite. However, because it experienced the opposite of this, BLG ended up doing better in Riot’s math.
With this in mind: according to the numbers prepared by Riot, BLG had a more satisfactory year than T1, being a more consistent team and always reaching the finals of the competitions. T1 had a huge rise thanks to the title, having been responsible for taking the lead from Gen.G in the rankings, but it was not consistent enough to reach first place.
