LoL world champions T1 dominate LCK Awards

Player of the Year Lee ″Faker″ Sang-hyeok speaks to the audience during the 2023 LCK Awards at the IVEX studio in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

Korean League of Legends (LoL) team T1 were the big winners of the night, again.

All five members of this year’s World Championship-winning team took home prizes at the 2023 LCK Awards on Wednesday, earning the best player titles in each of their individual categories.

Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, 27, was named Player of the Year after becoming the most decorated LoL player in World Championship history, with four titles under his belt since winning his first a decade ago, in 2013.

But fellow T1 member Ryu “Keria” Min-seok had the biggest haul of the night, winning a total of four awards for his performance throughout this year’s LoL season.

In addition to winning Support of the Year, which came with a 2 million won ($1,500) cash prize, the 21-year-old also took home Regular Season MVP and Player of the Split for the Spring season, when T1 was named the All LCK First Team.

The annual awards ceremony, which honors the top players and teams from the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK), the country’s top-tier professional LoL bracket, took place at the IVEX studio in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi on Wednesday.

It marked a final cap to a big year for LoL in Korea, one of the biggest consumer bases for the online game with more than 150 million registered players worldwide.

It came weeks after T1 defeated Chinese team Weibo Gaming in the final round of the 2023 LoL World Championship, which took place live at a sold-out Gocheok Sky Dome in western Seoul. And not more than two months earlier, about half of the members of T1 were called up to the Korean national team to win a gold medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games, the first-ever international multi-sport tournament to include Esports as a medal category.

All five members of the Worlds-winning T1 squad re-signed with the team for the 2024 season.

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]