League of Legends Season 3 World Championships to be held at Staples Center

League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that the World Championship finals for season 3 of its global eSports tournament will be taking place at the Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings. Over 10,000 people are expected to attend the final match in the League of Legends tournament on Friday, October 4.

The University of Southern California's Galen Center will hold the semi-finals on September 16. The Galen Center hosted the Season 2 grand finals last year, to an audience of 7,000 spectators at the venue and over 8.2 million spectators online.

Qualifiers for each of the regions are taking place soon, with the North American and European matches occurring in late August at PAX Prime and Gamescom, respectively. Following the qualifiers, 14 teams from Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and an international wild-card team will fly to Los Angeles to compete in the semi-finals through both a group stage and a two round single-elimination stage for the $2 million prize pool.

The world championship prize pool is expected to bring the total sum of League of Legends prize money for Season 3 to over $8 million globally, with $1 million going to the championship's winning team.

The Season 3 finals are expected to beat the 18 million unique viewer peak of the recent League of Legends All-Star tournament, held in Shanghai in May.

Tickets will be available soon at lolesports.com and through other various ticketing outlets. GameSpot will be covering the event, so be sure to check out the GameSpot eSports hub.

[CORRECTION] The semi-finals will be held at the Galen Center on September 16. Previously, the article stated that it was the group stage event. GameSpot regrets the error.