Riot Games’ approach to music has redefined how entertainment and esports intersect. In a conversation with Sheep Esports, Maria Egan, the company’s Global Head of Music, explores the growing cultural weight of its annual Worlds Anthem and the creative philosophy behind it.

With “Sacrifice” released just one day before the 2025 League of Legends World Championship begins, Egan reflects on how these songs have evolved from the competition’s themes into global cultural moments that connect gaming and music beyond the League’s community walls.

How do you view the position of Riot Games in the broader entertainment industry as a company?

Maria Egan: "Well, I’m biased, but I think we’re in a very exciting position. We have two of the best IPs in the world. The League of Legends universe is extraordinary — it’s like a Pandora’s box full of incredible corners, characters, and worlds. You can go really deep into just one character like Jinx, and there are still over 160 others you haven’t even explored. It’s an incredible, multi-generational, hundred-year IP that could go on forever because it’s so deep and so well-crafted.

The more we release cinematics for VALORANT, the more story and depth begin to form — like with Ego. You can see how much people want more of that. I’ve even seen fans using AI tools to make live-action VALORANT clips, and I think, “Oh my god, this is going to be amazing,” when we start telling stories from that IP in new ways.

So yes, I think we have two of the best IPs in the world — not just in gaming, but in entertainment as a whole. They’re full of incredible stories waiting to be told, and we care deeply about making great things. That’s the key to long-term success. There isn’t a “money mindset.” Obviously, we’re a business, but in creative meetings, no one says, “What’s going to make us the most money?” Or “What song will be the biggest hit?” We’re responsible business owners, of course, but that’s never the reason behind creative choices. The belief is that if we do the right thing — if we make players fall deeply in love with these worlds and characters — then the economy and engagement naturally follow. That’s the reward for creating genuine delight.

It’s almost a spiritual mission, and I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true — from the very top of the company. Even our CFO, whose job is literally to watch the money, is always high-fiving me about the music work we do. I’m sure it doesn’t make a big difference to Riot’s financial results, but he’s excited about it. Everyone’s excited about the art, the passion, and the emotion our work generates — through cinematics, music, live events, and esports. We’re even starting to create music events not tied to competition, and those are incredibly powerful.

When you see a thousand people singing along to Die for You from VALORANT, just celebrating, with the game at the center of that peak, a euphoric moment in their lives — it’s super, super fun.

How would you define the entertainment value of the world's anthem today beyond its role for the competition?

Maria Egan: The anthem is always very linked to the story we're trying to tell around the video, and obviously, the journey that the pros have been on this year. The title is “Sacrifice,” and you'll see the theme really is about that sort of struggle and what you have to give up to be the best. And that's obviously in any sport, but particularly for our pros, that feeling of you sacrificing a normal life. You sacrifice relationships often to climb to the top. And so just honoring that struggle then, so there's this sort of thematic enforcement that it does, and then there's the immunity moment. It's a memory, it's a container.

So people really remember the esports moments through these anthems. The Korean fans love the "New Jeans" moment and the song really anchors it in time. And then there's the benefit that songs have to be able to pierce through pop culture. When we work with artists like Linkin Park or G.E.M., who are superstars in their own right, it just brings a lot of attention and reminds people that Worlds is happening and Worlds is here. And even if you're not so actively playing the game anymore and fans of these sports in general just kind of calls them back into our ecosystem and it's like sending a flare gun up into the sky to let everyone know that Worlds is happening. So it does a few different things. It sort of, music is uniquely powerful in that way.

How did you approach G.E.M. and work with her?

Maria Egan: She had spoken to our team before Bob on my team, worked directly with her and Iris, who's in our China office, have really managed that relationship. And for a long time there's been discussion about what would be the right thing for her. But she's a superstar, so we had to find the biggest possible stage. So Worlds in China is the biggest possible stage we have, and she was amazing throughout the recording process and I think is excited about the collaboration that we're going to see some really special things at the OC that she was excited about creatively doing.

So it's been great and I think we were very focused to see it on finding an artist that really had that deep resonance for our China players in the same way that Linkin Park really had that for American, European players. So I think this is just a pattern that we've established over the last few years of really thinking deeply about the home country. We did it with New Jeans in Korea, even going back to K/DA in Korea. And so when we have a location that helps ground our artist selection and we think about, "Okay, what would thrill those tens of thousands of people in the stadium? What would thrill all those kids watching at home?" And also introducing G.E.M., even though she's a superstar in certain parts of the world, she's not as well known in others and introducing her and she's an incredible artist and introducing her to parts of the world that maybe she hasn't spent a lot of time yet.

What have you learned from past anthems?

Maria Egan: Every year is different. The Linkin Park opportunity was so unique because of the connection to Arcane and we experimented with featuring the band and the video because it made sense given their connection to the sport and to our ecosystem for a long time. And Mike [Shinoda]'s love of animation and the relationship we already had with Arcane. So we did something we'd never done before, which was to put the artist in the video, which was totally the right thing to do. And I think we made an incredible clip. We won awards for that clip.

But I think this year the pivot was just more for going back to focusing on the athlete stories, the pro player stories, and really focusing back in on those narratives, of a sport so epic. And particularly when you're in China, particularly when you're in Asia, those battles are so high stakes that we really wanted to just really center the pro players' journeys in the video and the song.

It's a very different kind of song. Last year, it was a very big uptempo metal rock song and this year, a very different kind of song. And it's a very different kind of cinematic — epic. So G.E.M was perfect because we needed someone who could deliver that very big vocal, almost like a return to the cinematic quality of Legends Never Die and songs like that. So it wasn't a question of learnings, it was just what we're trying not to do is just do the same thing over and over again. And sometimes players have expectations that you want to meet, and sometimes you want to lead people to somewhere new and show them something that they weren't expecting. And I think we are just, when we have an annual beat like this where making a great song every year is a hard creative task to accomplish it. Some years you do better than others and sometimes artists like Linkin Park had a perfect song at that moment that worked for us.

But it's not so much about learnings, it's more just about really being in the moment and not being reactive. We try not to be like, “Oh, let's just pivot and do opposite to things that did or didn't work”. It's more just what's right for this moment, for this story, for this set of stories we want to tell for this place that we're hosting the event for this moment in time, what's going on in the world, and let's just deliver the best possible show and the best possible song for our players in this moment.

Andres [Cerro] said that there is almost no return of investment on the world's anthem and the world's anthem are not being created for that return of investment, but as a celebratory moment and song for the fans. Can you add anything to that?

Maria Egan: If he means by financial means and we're not doing it to make money, then he's totally right. I mean, we're a gaming company. The games are our business and that's the engine of our business. Music is really a gift in many ways to our fans. We can make money sometimes if we have a big song, obviously we have a music business. But we're never making the decision because of how much money we can make and "Let's get the biggest stars so we can make a bunch of money.”

Often when you get the biggest stars.. Within the case of Linkin Park, we license that song, there's no financial value for us in picking that song. And I think that's the right way to make these decisions. Like I said, it's just about making the right decision for the players at that moment. And whether that's licensing a song from a superstar or putting a new artist on something.. Or in the case of New Jeans, when we actually selected them, they hadn't really broken through yet, but we knew they were on an exciting journey. By the time Worlds came around eight, nine months later after we'd already made the decision, we looked like we were plucking them at their peak, but we'd picked them as a new and exciting rising artist.

So like I said, he's right. I think there's a return on investment that's not financial. There's a huge return on investment in terms of player love and player engagement and the sort of halo that comes from making great music because it's hard to make great music, and we're one of the best at it in the gaming industry, and we have a lot of respect from the player community about how great our music is, but we don't make these decisions for money. Money's sort of a nice downstream result if we do a great job and certain stars align, but absolutely a hundred percent it's right. It's never a factor in how we make a decision about doing things.

Last year you said that artists were increasingly approaching Riot first instead of the opposite, which was a couple of years back. How is that trend going this year?

Maria Egan: This year was very much G.E.M. had expressed interest in working with us for a long time. Bob and my team had been in touch with her manager about trying to find the right thing. Anyma also had wanted to work with us on Arcane. We'd been trying to find a moment for him on Arcane, and then it was actually this thing he was working on with Alex Seaver — who wrote Sacrifice — that inspired us to think about, "Oh wow, okay, he can do this more cinematic thing. Let's try and figure out a way to incorporate him in Worlds this year."

So yeah, I think as we've elevated the OC with bigger and bigger artists, that obviously opens the door for other artists to look in and say, "Okay, well there's something happening there," and that's obviously had a really positive effect for these previous artists that have come before me. I mean, that was always our goal.

Years back we would joke about how we get to that place where being on the world stage is an honor for an artist. Worlds is not a brand gig where you just have to write the biggest check, but it's actually a collaboration where they want to be on our stage just as much as we want them on our stage. So I feel like we've gotten to that point and we've already got a lot of really interesting conversations happening for next year with artists that have knocked on our door. And again, we're going to make the best decision for that year at the time when we've got a clear review of what stories we want to tell.

What is the biggest challenge for you as a team to make sure that a song sounding good on online platforms also resonates in a stadium?

Maria Egan: There is a lot of debate sometimes between is the song serves the video because the video's the first thing players see, and that's often where the impressions are formed, or do we even like it around the video long before they see the OC performance? But the OC performance is where it really comes to life.

So a good example of that was the VAL Champions OC where Quing Madi who did this song, Ego, for us, and people love the video obviously. But even myself — I love the song, I love the video — when she performed it at Champs this year, I was just like, holy. And it hit really different because she's such an insanely good live performer.

And then last year, Linkin Park having a fully live band singing fully live on stage, we've got a lot of choreo happening, and there's support from production and there isn't a live band playing or live musicians playing, but having a fully live band playing just brought such a different energy. So we did think about this year, we were like, “Okay, what do we learn from last year? What extra magic do we get, particularly in the room, or on the broadcast?" It feels good online, by the way, but in the room it feels really different when an artist is fully live performing.

And so we talked a lot about making sure that we found a performer that could pull the song off. We had the song before we picked G.E.M. who could pull the song off live and had that kind of a voice. So it's becoming more of our thought process, but it's a really good question.

I mean, I'm curious what you, because you've followed this so closely and you're thinking about, what do you think, what do you think? Is it about the video? Is it about the song? Is it about the oc? What do you think?

For me, songs can resonate in different ways depending on the setting. Some, like The Call from the 2022 San Francisco Opening Ceremony, are powerful but even more impactful live, while others, such as Star Walkin’, work better digitally and don’t always translate the same in person. Sacrifice also builds to a climactic final bridge, making it feel epic and perfectly suited for an opening ceremony performance...

Maria Egan: It's a good call out, because sometimes you are making things differently, if you want to make something that's going to blow up online or TikTok, and there were moments where we were talking about, "Well, what is the goal?" Is the goal to serve the video and make the best, most perfect song for the video? Is the goal to have that kind of big exciting social media moment in China where everybody's talking about it? Is the goal to have an incredible OC and performance?

And I think this year we really just over-indexed on that epic performance and made the OC one of the most spectacular of all time because we're in China, and China loves spectacle. [...]We're aware that we have different artists do different things for us, for different audiences, and we have to just become more aware of where those choices are resonating the most. But yes, I think this year I went into this year going, "Okay, it's not going to be about having charting the song all over the world" in the way that that was Linkin Park's focus because they were coming back with a big album and they were working radio and doing all those things. To me, this year, it's about delivering an incredible Opening Ceremony. I think as players start to realize that the Anthem for us does different things depending on the year and the artists we're working on, and they'll go on the journey with us to be like, Star Walkin’ was the right song for that year, and then GODS was the right song for that year, and Sacrifice will be the right song for this year.

So from Riot's perspective, how do you work on looking at all of these cross-references and cross-industry projects?

Maria Egan: We can't always plan it. I always call it the “Pierce the Sky,” effect where you get beyond the clouds and they can see you from space. We're our own little planet, but the League players and the League community or the VAL community, we're a little planet. And if you send something up, sometimes just the people on the planet see it and you're like, “Oh, that's really amazing!” And then sometimes you send something up and it goes so far that everybody on every other planet sees it. And I use that reference a lot about how much stuff travels, but we can't always predict it.

Nobody predicted the Stromae song would be the breakout song in the second season of Arcane. We were focused on and we'd made a video for Twenty One Pilots. Stromae is mostly known in France, but the song just connected with everyone. It's kind of thrilling when you're taken by surprise.[...]

I've said it in the case of music, our core fan base, if you think about both the players currently, players who've maybe played in the past aren't playing, but are paying attention to what we're doing. And then maybe gaming fans who love our music or love our IP, but don't necessarily play our games. Our core fandom is so big, hundreds and hundreds of millions of people that if we get it right for that core fandom, it will be a hit because we have such a big base. So we're a superstar. We're the Taylor Swift of gaming.

If we just do something that our fans love, it will be huge. Not every fan always loves everything, but we always have a view of, “Okay, this is really for our China players this year,” or “This is really for our North America fans this year.” And we try to be very specific about who we're trying to serve.

When something connects with everybody.. a good case of that was K/DA. It was really designed for a Korean moment, but it connected with everybody everywhere and Brazil and Europe. And I think it just means that you've done a really good job at making something high quality because people can recognize quality and art.

There's a lot going on all the time, but at our best, we make great art in animation or in music or in live events, or we try and make genre defining things, and when we do it right and work with World-class talent, people can feel that.