The League of Legends World Championship final is held at Pudong Football Stadium in Shanghai on Saturday. Photo: Yang Ruoyu/GT

In front of 6,312 fans chosen by lucky draw, South Korean esports team Damwon Gaming grabbed the crown of the 2020 League of Legends (LOL) World Championship after beating China's Suning Gaming in the finals on Saturday.

The victory of Damwon helped South Korea regain the top spot in the world after a gap of three years. Bot laner Jang Yong-joon said he hoped to encourage the players who were going through difficulties to keep working hard to achieve their dreams. 

Suning's top laner Chen Zebin, one of most sparkly players in the World Championship, vowed his team would win back next year.

The final game, held at the Pudong Football Stadium in Shanghai, is the first time that the LOL professional league, the world's top esports event with the biggest viewership, hosted a match with the audience present in the stadium since the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020. 

A total of 22 teams from around the world gathered in Shanghai to compete for the championship which began in September. But there was no presence of the audience in the stadium before the finals.

The Pudong Football Stadium with 37,000 designed seats only received 6,312 people on Saturday due to epidemic prevention. The spectators were chosen by lucky draw from 3.2 million online applications and watched the game for free.

Esports industry has witnesses a steady rise in recent years around the world.  

Last year's LOL World Championship attracted over 100 million audiences online and the posts related to the World Championship in 2020 have been viewed over 8 billion times on China's Twitter-like social media platform Sina Weibo. 

In the first half of 2020, China's esports market revenue hit 71.9 billion yuan ($10.6 billion), a 54.7 percent increase year on year. 

However, the epidemic took away the fun of watching games at the away field - some fans are accustomed to accompanying their home team to away games, after the home and away game system was introduced to China's LOL professional league in 2017.

A spectator surnamed Liu from Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, told the Global Times that watching the game in the stadium again is a wonderful experience. 

Xi'an is the home ground of esports team World Elite, and Liu said he got used to watching the team's games on weekends just like watching movies before the epidemic.

Although failing to win the final, Suning Gaming's performance at the World Championship brought benefits to its parent, retail giant Suning. 

The sales of esports-related products on Suning's online platform from September 20 to October 20 increased 142 percent compared to previous 30 days.

The 2021 LOL World Championship finals will still be held in Shanghai.