In August 2012, Riot Games announced The League of Legends Championship Series, a global league of the top professional, salaried teams that features multiple matches per week and playoff events leading up to the World Championship.
As players begin to battle for spots in the League of Legends Championship Series during Season Three, Riot has went and registered the domain name ChampionshipSeriesLeague.com (WHOIS) through the internet brand protection company MarkMonitor.
Could Riot be planning to launch a new website that provides online coverage of the Championship Series?
It’s too early to tell. For now, the domain name doesn’t resolve to a web page, but given the massive popularity of League of Legends and its thriving community, it wouldn’t be surprising.
Another possible sign that Riot may do more with the name than just park it, is that, unlike most companies that buy up dozens, sometimes hundreds of domain names to help protect their brand, Riot Games has gone a different route, selectively acquiring a limited number of domain names over the years.
According to a rough estimate using Reverse Whois, Riot only owns about 100 domains.
The company’s last major buying spree came in April 2012, when it secretly registered a slew of domain names for the top secret project Supremacy. Riot has also acquired names by filing complaints with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which led to the company taking down porn and scam sites like support-leagueoflegends.com, LeagueofLegends.co, and LeagueofLegendsPorn.com.
If you’re not familiar with the League of Legends Championship Series, here’s a recap:
- The League of Legends Championship Series: the top eight teams from the US and EU, plus top teams from the Asian regions
- The top three teams from Gamescom and PAX immediately qualify
- Weekly regional pro League of Legends matches live, for free, in HD
- Millions of dollars at stake
- Regular season, regional playoffs and a spectacular World Championship
- Critical Challenger Circuit events featuring up-and-coming teams vying for a shot at the League of Legends Championship Series
Whether Riot launches a new online website for Season Three and beyond, is all just speculation at this point.
We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, you can keep checking the website ChampionshipSeriesLeague.com to see if anything goes online.
(Image of Season Two via LeagueofLegends.com)