The year's inaugural global League of Legends event, the First Stand Tournament, concluded on the 22nd, and the LCK regular season is set to kick off on April 1st. This First Stand Tournament ended with the disappointing result of no domestic teams reaching the finals. However, regardless of the match results, a bitter aftertaste remained as instances of LCK teams being disregarded were frequently spotted during the event's official content coverage.

A prime example is the official streamer for this year's First Stand Tournament, 'Baiano'. During an interview with 'Chovy' (Jeong Ji-hoon), he placed popcorn—a symbol for 'choking'—in front of the player, and later posted on social media, 'Thanks for giving Faker three championship titles.' Gen.G raised an objection, and the streamer apologized. However, as it was revealed that the streamer had previously posted content mocking Gen.G, Riot Games faced criticism for failing to conduct a thorough vetting process when selecting official streamers.

Another LCK team, BNK FearX, faced 'passing' allegations throughout the First Stand Tournament. A mistake occurred in an official post announcing a matchup, where a photo of 'Daystar' (Yoo Ji-myung) was used instead of the starting mid-laner 'VicLa' (Lee Dae-kwang). Furthermore, on the official League of Legends esports channel, the 'Thank You' post for eliminated teams featured LYON before BNK FearX, even though BNK FearX played their match earlier. The BNK FearX post was only uploaded after fans pointed out the oversight, deepening the suspicions of them being passed over.

The protagonists of the game are the players, and they are the ones who drive the tournament. However, the organizers, who are responsible for supporting them, must thoroughly manage the production of content regarding major tournament news to respect the players and foster a positive fan culture by reducing unnecessary noise. We hope that such mistakes are not repeated at the next major international event, the Mid-Season Invitational.