Or perhaps they are just players because this game is 100% free to play, it's not graphic or usage intensive so most people in the world with a game-running computer of sorts can play it, it's also a famous brand and the leader in its genre. It's all over ads on the internet for anyone that visits any sort of could-be-gaming-related sites.
It's being popularized into a regularly accepted e-Sport both on the world championship stage as well as domestic on national stages and collegiate levels. Many schools have college-level teams that compete in a League, and some are even beginning to offer classes on it as well as scholarships for high-grade, dedicated League players.
It's a game that can cater to about any audience, and excels where many games like CoD may fail with certain audience types.
It's really easy to pick up conceptually and does not require extreme, blink-reactions right off the bat. Forever to master, but easy to pick up.
It's popularity is widely due to it catering to about any audience out there. Hardcore enough for the hardcore gamers (high elo) and can be casual and relaxed for those that want it to be (Low ELO, blind norms)
For many it's a great game to bond over with friends due to 5 players per team and always being in contact with each other, unlike something like CoD where you're almost never in contact or a game like Portal where it's literally just you two and no one else so you can only bring one friend.
Do bots exist? Absolutely? Do you think they contribute to Riot's success? No. Bots don't make Riot money. Any number they report doesn't just give them revenue. Even if, for example, a quarter of Riot's reported players were bots, I wouldn't not pick up the game just because it was 75 million a month instead of 100million a month.
There's no way to base any claim about Riot boosting numbers with bots. While it may be logical to assume some numbers are bots, most are still most likely players. Either way, at least tens of millions of players play this game, and the bots aren't even their fault. They actively work to get rid of bots, scammers, boosters, etc. But they can't look at their numbers and go "That's not right, a lot of those are bots." Well how can you come to that conclusion? You see some bots in games, see some advertisements about boosting services or scripts and you just assume that translates to a large scale?
So your statement about the reason League is so good is because of bots is just a random shot in the dark, and ignorant because you completely ignore the great, shining qualities about this game that, more logically, contributed to its success.
