The Best Team in League of Legends Esports

League of Legends has been around for around 15 years. This MOBA game has a prestigious esports history that revolves around names like Fnatic, Samsung Galaxy, and Damwon Gaming. But above all, SKT, and later T1, reign supreme.

In this guide, you will learn more about the history of the best team in League of Legends and what enabled it to win Worlds four times.

T1’s 2023 Achievement

In 2023, T1 won Worlds for the 4th time, after seven years of failed attempts in which they qualified for the Grand Final twice. Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok was regarded as the best player in the history of the game even before this achievement. But now that he’s won four Worlds titles, he will be even harder to dethrone.

It will probably take decades for some other player like him to come along and achieve even more impressive results. He’ll likely be around for at least 4-5 more years. By 2030, we’ll likely conclude that he won Worlds 5-7 times, which is a monumental achievement in a game that’s played by more than 120 million people.

What made 2023 a special year wasn’t just the fact that T1 won Worlds again. It was also the fact that we had the opportunity to see the team with and without Faker. In the Summer, the South Korean announced that he had injured an arm and would not compete for a while.

Immediately after this announcement, people started to panic. T1 went from finishing the group stage of LCK Spring with a record of 17 W – 1 L, to losing match after match in LCK Summer. Their final record for this split was 9 W – 9 L.

Fortunately for the team, Faker came back just in time and managed to compete in the playoffs. Because of this, T1 went from struggling to qualify for the second phase of the split to finishing 2nd. The only team that found a way to beat them was Gen.G Esports.

Winning Worlds 2023

At Worlds 2023, Gen.G were eliminated by Bilibili Gaming in the quarterfinals. Then, the team (BLG) beat the LCK’s highest seeded team. was in turn eliminated by Weibo Gaming in the semifinals. This allowed T1 to win the Grand Finals 3-0 because Weibo was an underdog. However, to get to that Grand Final, they had to beat JD Gaming, who had been the best team of the season up until that point.

Needless to say, everyone cheered for Faker and T1 during the final match of the tournament, which attracted a very high number of viewers. At its peak, the Grand Final of Worlds 2023 was watched by 6.4 million people.

For this victory, T1 received the Esports Team of the Year award at Esports Awards 2023, and Faker received the Esports Player of the Year award. This was one of the most dramatic and spectacular years in the organization’s history.

The History of SKT and T1

Before becoming T1, Faker’s team was known as SK Telecom T1 K and then SK Telecom T1. He joined in 2013 and won his first LoL World Championship that same year. This looked like a monumental achievement at the time, but in the coming years the world learned that T1 was not like other teams.

It’s very common in esports to see a formidable competitor winning something important and then quickly descending into obscurity. For T1, 2013 was merely the beginning of an epic journey.

In 2015, after a disappointing 2014 season, T1 won LCK Spring and Worlds again. Then, in 2016, they won MSI, and Worlds for the third time.

They continued to play well in 2017 and won MSI again, but at Worlds they were crushed by Samsung Galaxy (0 – 3). That defeat was the start of a dark period in T1’s history.

In 2018, the team finished the two LCK splits in 4th and 7th place. Because of this, they did not even qualify for Worlds. In 2019, they made a surprising comeback and won both splits. They also did well at MSI (3rd – 4th) and Worlds (3rd – 4th). But they couldn’t go all the way. In both cases, they were eliminated by G2 Esports, who were very strong at the time.

In 2020, T1 did great in LCK Spring (1st) but failed miserably in LCK Summer (5th). Their seasonal goals were ruined by that failure.

The Comeback

The following season was better: 4th place in LCK Spring, 2nd place in LCK Summer, and 3rd – 4th place at Worlds 2021. Then, in 2022, everyone thought that this would finally be Faker’s year again. T1 had won LCK Spring. In LCK Summer, they had finished 2nd.

But after qualifying for the Grand Final of Worlds and leading 2-1 against an underdog (DragonX), they somehow lost the next two games and ended in tears, in what could have been an amazing season otherwise.

Then came the 2023 season, which made everyone forget about the previous failures. The fans were in tears and everyone celebrated T1’s 4th success at Worlds.

The Best LoL Team in History

When people say that T1 is the best team in LoL history, they’re not exaggerating. This team has won more titles than any other and remained near the top for the better part of a decade. They won four Worlds titles, played in two other Worlds Grand Finals, and finished 3rd – 4th two more times. That’s a spectacular success rate.

In the history of League of Legends, we’ve seen many great teams from South Korea, China, and Europe conquering the world but not being able to defend their title the next season and then disappearing from the top four or even the top eight. T1’s story has been very different so far, and it will likely continue to inspire as long as Faker continues to play.

The biggest worry for T1 fans, after what we witnessed in 2023, is that Faker’s retirement would instantly lead to a massive performance drop for T1. That’s still some years away, but it will come sooner or later.

Featured Image Credit: Riot Games