Aiming to break the curse of bringing video game adaptations to mainstream entertainment, Riot created its groundbreaking Arcane animated series completely in-house, working with Fortiche Production, its longtime partner animation studio, after years of fan requests for deeper storytelling.

To release Arcane, Riot seized an opportunity to redefine entertainment through focusing on audience engagement through the lens of gaming. Mobilizing all teams across its worldwide studios, Riot brought the show to market in a way that transformed the standard TV series launch into a globally connected celebration that blended the best of traditional Hollywood Premieres with a digital first approach.

League of Legends is one of the biggest games in the world, but in entering a new market of entertainment, Riot Games faced challenges bringing its IP to entertainment, including overcoming a niche audience of animation fans, unproven product and tons of competition for viewers’ attention.

To overcome these challenges and introduce Season 1 of Arcane in a way that would pay off a decade of dedicated fandom from players, Riot sought to challenge the norms of entertainment launches that focus primarily on driving viewership at launch to craft a multi-week, global campaign that would inspire ongoing tune-in and social hype from start to finish.

Taking inspiration from gaming, Riot developed RiotX Arcane; a connected brand experience spanning across digital broadcast, games, and immersive in-person events designed to captivate with creative content that evolved and escalated along with the narrative acts of the show to offer a one-of-a-kind experience.

To launch Arcane in an authentic way for the gaming audience, Riot would simultaneously launch Arcane through Netflix, its global distribution partner, Tencent Video in China, as well as Twitch, a popular interactive live-streaming service.

Arcane would be the first ever Netflix series to allow co-streaming, enabling fans around the world to watch the first few episodes for free, together with their favorite content creators and influencers around the world.

To celebrate the show finale, Riot hosted an event in Los Angeles, transforming a giant 20,000 sqft warehouse to an experiential gamer’s paradise. All live streamed on Twitch for fans around the world, influencers and players completed a Secret Cinema immersive theater experience that opened into a surprise Arcane themed event space that hosted a custom charity gaming tournament, music performances from artists on the Arcane soundtrack, and live interviews with talent from the show.

Riot strategically selected distribution partners that were aligned to its goal of delivering a globally synchronized launch for its player base. Debuting simultaneously on Netflix globally and Tencent Video in China, Riot was able to create a shared moment for its global fanbase, ensuring parity and a spoiler free premiere experience.

Additionally, launching Arcane's 9 episodes in 3 separate batched arcs allowed Riot to mirror a more traditional gaming event, releasing new features and experiences in its games to mirror and support the events happening in the show.

In addition to Netflix, Riot's global distribution partner for Arcane, it heavily used the Twitch platform to gamify the experience, allowing viewers to earn rewards that could be used in its games. Riot hyper-served its target audience of League of Legends fans, leaning on its evangelists to create a massive conversation volume that would transform it into a broader cultural moment.

The day prior to Arcane’s launch and excitement hit a fever pitch, the title song from the show soundtrack, “Enemy” featuring Imagine Dragons & JID, was performed at Riot’s League of Legends World Championship. Kicking off the show in a way never seen before, Riot brought an Arcane musical performance to its over 70 million Peak Concurrent Viewers and over 30 million average minute audience, making the Finals match the most viewed global esports event of all time.

During the premiere screening, fans at home could watch the first episode live feed, virtually seating them amongst the crowd as if they were physically present, or click over to their favorite influencer stream to watch the show together with their fan communities. With over 6,000 co-streamers on Twitch, effectively turning fans into additional broadcast stations, over 8 million unique viewers tune in to watch the premiere on Twitch alone.

Fan response to these these immersive experiences shattered records across viewership and online engagement. In addition to hitting the #1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 charts in over 50 countries, it received a rare 100% critic score and 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a record for any Netflix show, and swept the Annie Awards, winning all of its nine nominations.

Over 10 million total hours of Arcane content was viewed on Twitch across Premiere and Undercity Nights events. Related social content drove over 130 million views on owned channels and user generated content drove a staggering 2 billion+ views on TikTok alone.

This resulted in 3+ billion hours of games played in November 2021, over three times the average hours played by an American gamer. It is the equivalent of every American playing Riot's games for 9 hours, or the entire global population playing Riot's games for 22.7 minutes.