Last Saturday I went to my first massive esports event: The League of Legends Worlds Championship. More than 16,000 people crowded into the Chase Center arena where the Golden State Warriors play. It was a polished event, full of esports fan installations from cosplay to pregame podcasts.

Well ahead of the opening, crowds of gamers packed the plaza. I couldn’t have been more detached as a fan. I’m not a League of Legends player and my colleague Jordan Fragen had to fill me in on the play-by-play of the action for the entire match. But by the end of it, I was teary-eyed as the other 5.15 million fans (peak viewership per Esports Charts), and it finally dawned on me how powerful esports events can be. I could understand better why people love their games and their esports so much.

Riot Games has been at this for more than a decade and more than 600 million people have played League of Legends. But the emotion of the event wasn’t purely about mass numbers. Riot couldn’t have set up a better grudge match, even if it was making a fictional movie or tv show about esports. It was esports storytelling at its finest.

While the stars were pretty stone faced during the match, the…