Played by more than 100 million fans across the world, League of Legends is one of the most popular video games on the planet and the most globally watched esport. Since 2011, the League of Legends World Championship is the largest esports tournament hosted by a different country each year. A significant event of that scale deserves a powerful and memorable kickoff. In 2018, the release of the "Rise" musical anthem signaled the start of the tournament by celebrating the climb professional esports players go through in order to claim the prestigious title of World Champion.

The creative idea came together in three parts. The idea celebrated the history of League of Legends esports by stylizing matches as epic cinematic showdowns featuring the 2017 World Champion, Kang "Ambition" Cha-yong. Secondly, the team ensured it delighted core esports fans with visual references that pay homage to previous esports events and the larger League of Legends universe. Lastly, the idea aimed to inspire curiosity in new fans by creating a fight song with mainstream artists that stands up alongside traditional sports anthems.

To celebrate the globally diverse League of Legends fanbase, a team of musical artists from around the world were brought together to create a song complementary to the high energy of the World Championship. In order to create an experience that would be topical to the event, a team of esports experts analyzed the previous World Championship to select compelling matches to feature in the music video. Working with the game development team, the film production crew identified key elements from the League of Legends video game to incorporate within the art. Finally, the broadcast team developed a release strategy that would reveal multiple elements of the "Rise" campaign to fans at optimal times during the tournament.

The "Rise" music video was released a week before the start of World Championship on September 26, 2018. Shortly after the release, fans immediately began searching for all the historical references within the film. Music from "Rise" was heavily featured during the live broadcast of the World Championship. Midway through the event a remix of the song featuring an artist native to the host nation, South Korea, was published. Additionally, professional players who were portrayed within the video were gifted action figures of their stylized personas that they shared across their social media channels. Finally, a live rendition of "Rise" was performed during the Opening Ceremony of the World Championship Finals by all the artists who collaborated to create the musical anthem.

“Rise” was an immediate hit and drove millions of conversations across multiple social media platforms like Twitter & Reddit. Over the course of several weeks numerous online communities worked to identify more than 70 easter eggs that were painstakingly crafted into the video. To date the official “Rise” music video has accumulated more than 111 million views on YouTube as well as more than 38 million streams on Spotify. Remixes and complementary content created by fans have accumulated more than 20 million views in their own right. The performance of “Rise” during the Opening Ceremony contributed to driving a record breaking 99.6 million unique viewers to tune into the World Championship Finals broadcast. Finally, the music video was most recently nominated for a Sports Emmy, achieving the goal of having esports be perceived as a true peer to traditional sports and cementing its place in pop culture.