Riot Games and Cisco announced a multi-year partnership that establishes the global technology company as the official enterprise networking partner of League of Legends Esports. The partnership will provide infrastructure and networking capabilities across five continents and three global events that will hopefully improve the competitive experience for pro players as well as enhance the viewing experience for fans.

Cisco’s networking solutions will power “The Realm” — the private game server used exclusively for pro-level competitive LoL Esports matches at three major global events: The League of Legends World Championship, The Mid-Season Invitational, and The All-Star Event. Cisco’s highly secure, flexible, and reliable networking technology will serve as the foundation to deliver the world’s most popular esport as it moves into its second decade.

Cisco will provide Riot Games with a mix of its leading networking technology spanning Cisco UCS→ Blade and Rack Servers and Nexus Data Center switches, allowing for significant improvements to gameplay performance and studio broadcasting capabilities. In addition, Cisco also will provide a flexible architecture for Riot’s Regional Broadcast Centers (RBCs) that will support competitive integrity to serve global esports for years to come.

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In order to power the next decade of esports, Riot Esports will deploy a new collaborative global infrastructure and networking upgrades. Cisco’s global and regional footprint allows Riot the flexibility, accessibility, and security needed to produce world-class esports events in all corners of the globe. Using Cisco’s advanced networking technology, fans at home will be able to watch LoL Esports broadcast streams with reduced delays and improved quality, bringing them closer to the action.

Tournament game servers

As part of a global initiative to standardize and promote competitive integrity around the world, Riot Games will deploy more than 200 new tournament game servers in regional studios all centrally managed through Cisco’s new Intersight SaaS solution.

Using Cisco’s UCS B-Series Blade Servers, C-Series Rack Servers, and Nexus 9000 Series Switches, Riot Games will establish a common infrastructure footprint across the 12 RBCs including virtualization, storage, and computing to deliver improved performance with reduced latency for regional professional gameplay. Cisco blade nodes can easily adapt and support the broadcast centers without the need for new hardware, allowing for potential new esport applications to come online with ease.

As a worldwide leader in esports, Riot Games will undergo a major, global expansion of their object storage system to support content distribution, media processing, and global content archive. Using Cisco’s Storage Optimized Computing Solutions, Riot will build an archive to protect their legacy of content that will more than triple the amount of usable storage and capacity.

LoL Esports has become the biggest esport in the world over the last decade, reaching a record-breaking 21.8 million average minute audience (AMA) for the 2019 World Championship Final. Cisco joins some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Mastercard, Louis Vuitton, Unilever’s AXE, Red Bull, OPPO, State Farm, and Secretlab, as premier global sponsors for League of Legends Esports.