Buy Championship Ashe and raise money for charity

Riot·Sep 16, 2017·5 votes·66,970 views

UPDATE: Vision matters -- we forgot about the ward. 25% of sales of Championship Ashe AND the Championship ward skin will go to the prize pool and be matched for the charity pool.

Last year everyone who purchased a Championship skin contributed to the Worlds prize pool. This year we’re taking it one step further. A cut of the proceeds from Championship Ashe sales add to the 2017 Worlds prize pool—and determine how much we donate to three global charities. Each one supports causes that players we asked care about: mental health care, access to education, and access to technology. We also partnered up with these charities to develop specific projects and goals we can fund, track, and achieve together.

The Charities

BasicNeeds builds sustainable programs that support people with mental illness and epilepsy in low- and middle-income countries. BasicNeeds trains and engages local governments and nonprofits to build working models of prolonged mental health advocacy and support. They aim to expand programs into three additional countries with the goal of aiding 250,000 more people over three years.

Learning Equality enables access to high-quality education in communities without Internet access, breaking the cycle of poverty around the world. They’ll further develop and launch their offline learning platform Kolibri to provide rich digital experiences for underserved students in over 175 countries.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation crafts low-cost computers for people all around the world use to learn and have fun with computing. All sales fund their technology education programs like CoderDojo. They plan to host 5,000 more coding dojos in communities across South America, India, China, and East Africa.

How Your Contribution Works

25% of Championship Ashe sales go to the 2017 Worlds prize pool, just like last year.

Additionally, Riot will match 25% of all Championship Ashe sales during Worlds 2017 to form a charity fund. Later on, you can vote on which cause you support the most—the higher your Honor level, the more weight your vote carries. The highest-voted charity will get 50% of the total pool, and the remaining amount will be split equally between the other two.

We’ll let you know when voting begins and how to lock in a vote for your favorite charity.

192 Comments

KawaiiCupcakezSep 18, 2017118 votes

The first time Riot has made me want a skin for a good cause and I JUST bought the Star Guardian Bundle as soon it came out!! Riot you're killing my wallet!!

[sg-janna]

DarkLordArbiturSep 18, 201756 votes

there will be great songs in your wallets name.

8IG SEXYSep 19, 201721 votes

I'll pour one out for your wallet

adjothSep 22, 201713 votes

My wallet - "Property of Riot" [sg-soraka]

Hungry CancerSep 18, 201784 votes

I live in the Ark-La-Tex and the area could really use some help. We are in serious need of blood donations and I think it would be really cool if you could find some way to do some kind of LoL blood drive that would reward players for giving blood for hurricane relief (around here most of the blood is being sent to the Houston area where they really need it but I don't know if other areas are doing the same). LifeShare has done something similar for organizatons in the past so I'm sure there's a way you could work together. It wouldn't need to be a big reward like a skin, though that would be badass, but a ward skin or even just an IP boost would help encourage players to donate who otherwise wouldn't even think about it which could really help the area to recover and would take some stress off of other relief organizations that are currently trying to balance helping Harvey victims with preparing for Jose and his friends to hit the East Coast. You guys have such a huge audience that you could really do some good if you encouraged more community service, and it'd get you some good publicity; I don't know of any game that is encouraging players to give and you could get people donating by the hundred thousands I'm sure. I know this would be isolated to the NA but I'm sure other regions have similar situations they could use help with so one charity ward skin could potentially do a lot worldwide.

L9 INT EU EU EUSep 18, 201733 votes

if they made it a vlad champion skin that would be amazing. Vladimir

DarkLordArbiturSep 18, 201713 votes

blood moon vlad confirmed

Hungry CancerSep 18, 20175 votes

That'd be dope as fuck

5000000000000000Sep 19, 20173 votes

Doctor Vladimir? Mad Scientist Vladimir?

ovo ViewsSep 19, 20174 votes

Hurricane Vladimir

ConalllSep 18, 201710 votes

I need more up-votes for this idea.

CannonFodder DeeSep 19, 20175 votes

I call you into action! Who's close to the disaster area(s) and ready to put in the work? Blood donation and transportation was a large part of the relieve effort for major disasters, such as the great East Japan Earthquake of 2011

Blood drives often need locations and host groups (so the blood drive can be larger than a blood drive bus with only a few chairs). It could be nice if Riot offers blood drive organizers a Lol reward (like ward skins or a Vlad skin) for being the person to contact or on the promotional team for a disaster relief effort*. Whatever would be an incentive local community members into action to organize in neighborhoods and on campuses.

American Red Cross has the largest network of staff, and would know the logistics of transporting blood into a disaster area -- I imagine transportation is the primary cause of the blood shortage, not national shortage of blood donations. I recommend organizing a blood drive near you and asking riot for a skin afterwards.

*FYI: Donating blood is a gift, and no company should offer an incentive for it -- other than cookies and juice! This is why no blood collection companies offer payment for blood donations.

Give the gift of life. Give blood!

SpunkySep 19, 20179 votes

Only logged in to upvote this. RIOT PLEASE CONSIDER HURRICANE HARVEY, IRMA, AND OTHER DISASTER RELIEF AID! WE ARE DYING DOWN HERE TRYING TO GET BACK ON OUR FEET. item 3085 summoner 4 summoner 6 summoner 3 item 3070

RiotKushnood Sep 19, 201739 votes

You bring up a good point and disaster relief is pretty timely of a topic when there are still lots of people displaced and in need of help. We shared this story on the subreddit a little while ago which shares our approach to funding disaster relief. Thought it'd be helpful to share here as well.

After the earthquake in Nepal a few years ago there was a LOT of discussions internally about whether we should run a global fundraiser for more disaster aid. However, there were other multiple tragedies in that year which didn't grab headlines and many other people were suffering. The questions of which disasters should we support, and how much, and where, and when were pretty hard to answer.

The solution we came up with was to partner with the org, International Medical Corps, and forward fund our disaster relief each year. Rather than being reactionary and providing our relief aid multiple weeks after the tragedy, we actually cut IMC a big check at the top of the year. As bad things happen, we "release" the funds which get to the site almost within 24 hours to help people get back on their feet and rebuild communities. We rely on our partner to raise issues that have a major tragedy to people around the world no matter what is in the headlines.

We've already released a lot of funding for these latest storms. Unfortunately, this campaign took many months of preparation and planning and we were unable to anticipate the devastation that many storms would bring around this time. But, for anyone who is interested in helping out as well, there are a lot of great organizations out there that could really use your support. Beware of scams and check major (reputable) news sites for some well-vetted nonprofits.

ReaxetionSep 20, 201710 votes

That is really cool! It makes me proud to be part of such a great community, and one thats owned by such a great company. People often times accuse riot of just wanting money, but its stuff like this that shows you really care.[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

RooAbost5Sep 18, 201735 votes

This is actually a genius idea! Hopefully they'll keep doing this for future events because this could be super helpful for so many people. GG Riot![sg-kiko]

Sunlight DragonSep 18, 201732 votes

I can see why some people would want a hurricane relief fund. But that is an American problem. As an American myself, I can see why RIOT wouldn't want to specify for that cause. These charities are a GLOBAL cause. Something every nation can get behind. We have plenty of help from our own to assist with the hurricanes of Texas and Florida. The severely impoverished likely don't get that kind of support in these 3rd world nations without internet access even. Don't get me wrong, I think donating to a hurricane disaster fund is a great idea, but I don't think a charity through RIOT is a necessary avenue for it when so many already exist.

Hungry CancerSep 18, 20177 votes

The problem is that most people won't give money to those on their own but if Riot were to do something to encourage a donation or as I suggested above, a blood drive then people who otherwise would never help will gladly do so.

"We have plenty of help from our own to assist with the hurricanes of Texas and Florida." You obviously don't live down here.

I get that it's an American problem so as I suggested in my comment earlier Riot could do something like a charity ward skin or even just give an IP boost weekend to people who participate in various approved charities internationally, thus opening it up to players in other countries and having a greater impact than if they were just focusing on Hurricane relief.

DolfanaticSep 19, 20174 votes

Limit the skin as a limited edition NA only server skin. They've done that before in the past with Sejuani.

HuntingForVodkaSep 19, 201720 votes

So I have never posted here before, but seeing this got my jimmies all rustled up thinking about doing some math. The question being: What would be the estimated sales and return for the charities?

Because we have data from last year I figured it all could be extrapolated out from there.

So let us take a look at some numbers.

So last year the sales were focused around Championship Zed skin and Championship ward skin. Both had some alternative ways of purchasing I.E. bundles or crates, but to save on the math I decided to do straight value posted by riot.

(RP to Money Calculations have been done using best value RP purchase in CAD then converted at current rates to USD there are most likely some inaccuracies) Championship Zed: 975 RP/$7.22 USD Championship Ward: 640 RP /$4.74 USD

This gives us an idea of the money on what players might have spent, give or take a bit.

Now to the fun part Prize Pool of 2016

Total of Prize pool was $5,070,000 USD From What I found Riot funded originally $2,130,000 USD That means that we the players raised a total of $2,940,000 USD Cool right, but wait that was 25% of the sales so we truly bought a total value in skins equal to $11,760,000 USD!

If using the rough estimations above and assuming that every player who bought the Zed and the ward at $11.96 USD ($7.22+$4.74) That would mean only 850,836 players purchased championship skins. ( $11,760,000%$11.96)

I think that is a crazy number.

But why you ask? Well, this number is tiny if we are thinking of how many players there are.

So some quick side math but just as important. Curious about what the player numbers are, I did some searching. What I found was that info really is kinda few and far between. Within the last couple years, there are very few solid numbers from riot games.

What I did find was in an interview in 2016 that says there are 100 million monthly players. combined with what their website listing at 100+ million monthly players. That give us some good current data, But not enough. So if we pull some historical data from their other posts in the past, we can get a good idea of how many players there are now.

So grabbing the data and making a graph (heck yes!) and using that we can get a good guess.

This is my estimation for 2016:

Over 100 million players battle it out in League every month
More than 45.5 million people play at least one game of League every day
Over 12 million players simultaneously play League during daily peak hours.

So with that in mind using the number of players that we estimated that are purchasing skins during 2016 fundraiser (850,836) and using the let say the daily player numbers (45.5 million) we get 1.9% of daily players bought the championship skins. Pretty cool ehh

Now back to the main event estimating what we will be the amount raised for charity and the prize pool for 2017 world championships.

Taking the data we have gathered to this point we are now equipped to get the answer we have been waiting for!

(RP to Money Calculations have been done using best value RP purchase in CAD then converted at current rates to USD there are most likely some inaccuracies)

Championship Ashe: 1350 RP/$9.99 USD

Estimated players for 2017:

Over 118 million players battle it out in League every month
More than 56 million people play at least one game of League every day
Over 14 million players simultaneously play League during daily peak hours.

So the final number are drum roll

1,064,000 Players making purchases (1.9% of 56 Million daily players )

10,629,360 USD in total Sales (1,064,000X$9.99)

2,657,340 USD in prize/charity (25% of 10,629,360USD)

Now wait this is less than last year..... Hrmm there are more players buying championship skins but the dollar value is less ($9.99 vs. $11.96) But by my reckoning, this should be pretty close.

Some things that are not accounted for and probably throw my numbers off namely:

Riot Games calculations for 2016 purchase amount could be different than my estimation.

Many of the numbers were pulled from my own estimations so this could throw number off a good ways. lowballed some number for a safer estimation.

The conversion rate in 2016 vs 2017 for CAD and USD could be impacting my data a fair bit.

There could be different purchase rates Zed vs. Ashe skins. some guesswork could be done with using pick rates. (Zed at 12.1% and Ashe at 11.6%)

The biggest thing not accounted for is the charity factor and how it will impact the numbers.

I don't know how, but some question that comes to mind are:

Will players purchase more championship Ashe skins for charity? Will we beat the previous year's numbers cause of the charity?

Sorry for the long post

Thanks for reading through all this took some time but I had fun and my jimmies are satisfied.

Have a good one and see you all in the summoner's rift!

Hungry CancerSep 19, 20178 votes

Statisticians unite!!!!!! Good work on the estimate broski but you did leave out the championship ward skin for this year as that will account for why last year brought more than your estimate for this year. The 2017 ward is different from last year's ward skin. Adding the new ward skin should bring the numbers up to 15,672,720 in total sales and 3,918,180 in prize money/donations. Of course these numbers aren't perfect as we used the number of daily players to extrapolate the number of players as opposed to the weekly or monthly players and i know that there are bound to be a lot of people like me who can't play daily but still love some skins, so it could fluctuate quite a bit.

HuntingForVodkaSep 19, 20173 votes

Thank man I did not even see that! Let see if we are right coming up in the next couple months

Rafael MerloSep 19, 20176 votes

Hey **HuntingForVodka **(and WizardCrab come and see what this dude did)

I believe your numbers can be refined if you consider the following hypothesis:

**1) **Zed skin maybe was more interesting to players than Ward Skin, which would result in a not 1-1 proportion of sales. Do a test: consider the total profit value you got and consider the 2 scenarios, if the first if all of it was for Zed, and the second if all of it was for the Wards. Consider how many units of which were sold in that occasion. As we're not Riot, take some another source site (as LoLKing) where you can see the popularity of a skin in how many games it gets played. If you can get back and use the data of the 2 months post end of the skins sales they maybe will represent better because of the "skin enthusiasm" phenomena. With SkinGamesPlayed / ZedGamesPlayed MAYBE you can get a good number about how many skins of these were bought on the occasion, and see the real proportion of Zed vs. Wards. This will earn you a better projection for the Ashe sales.

2) Riot says that they'll donate 'profits', but remember that profit isn't brute income. As I'm a brazilian and my Economy classes in my Nuclear Engineering undergrad course were in Portuguese, I'm not up to date with what all the terminology would be in English, but remember that, in a simplified scenario, Profit is Revenue (units . price) minus Costs, and Cost itself is a very ugly function that brokes in Fixed and Variable Costs. Riot Fixed Costs may appear to be the easy part (the Skins Team, Riot own infrastructure around the world and the web, etc) but the Variable Costs are dependent on how many units were sold, and for us to mathgrind costs of X microtransactions in the stores, or worse, the returns of the investment that their shareholdres deserve would be beyond the impossible, but CONCLUSION: if you followed the (1) above and found a abnormal quantity of Zed games with the skin, this can explain it, as y.P needs to go up if you raise the C(y) and need to mantain the equation to Profit.

As I said in (2) I'm brazilian, and that's why we never ever forget to consider one thing in every model: where the Taxes will impact? In you model, by far I can say that it's the $ to RP conversion rate, and it in itself is variable, because every country has different values and even ways to calculate. Regional participation in the contribution to the final Prize Pool is unknown to us as its impact, and same for its shares of costs and profits. The conclusion for this one is: our margin of error is even greater :(

Hey, folks from the Commerce Team, could you enlighteen us a little? I taunted Wizard Crab above, but I will add the names of Bilby Riot Snalf and Kantayams because they were the authors of the last posts I remember to be related to merch or something :P

Lookerboss101Sep 18, 201716 votes

Would buy just because it looks like a good skin, but now Riot is just making me want to buy it even more for charity!

Ashe

tysupSep 19, 201713 votes

I don't even play Ashe but I'm still buying this skin because it supports charity! Totally not addicted to skins... right?[sg-lulu]

piss timeSep 19, 201711 votes

Can I donate to save some bees with Beekeeper Singed? Singed

ISkateBoardISep 18, 20177 votes

HELL YEAH RITO. WELL DONE

NewerthianSep 18, 20176 votes

Fantastic initiative Riot!

MountandrewSep 19, 20175 votes

I actually teared up reading this. I'm so glad you guys are using your profits to help others improve their lives. Keep it up!

item 3682

P.S. Could you please post how much money you guys gained and gave to charity at the end of the skin's sale? I would love to see how much we helped.

DodecahedragramSep 19, 20174 votes

if only it was kindred*[slayer-jinx-unamused]*

BeatzBoyFTWSep 19, 201710 votes

{quoted}

if only it was kindred*[slayer-jinx-unamused]*

She literally made 0 appearance in all competitive matches, so giving her the Championship skin is meaningless.

NachoOneTrickSep 19, 20172 votes

No im pretty sure kindred got played 1 match in the LCS. Though i forget if it was NA or EU. And the kindred did not win..

BeatzBoyFTWSep 19, 20172 votes

She did got one, but not a good one, and Ashe's playrate already outdo her.

Reformed CheeseSep 19, 20174 votes

Does this work if I gift a friend?

XaafiraSep 19, 20178 votes

Every purchase counts towards the Worlds prize pool. Riot is matching that contribution for charity, so yes, it sure does work. GG <3 for being a good friend.

winteriscoming97Sep 19, 20174 votes

Damn, riot just made me buy a skin for a character I hate XD

RobSauce01Sep 18, 20173 votes

Will Championship Zed return?

XaafiraSep 18, 201723 votes

Yes! All esports skins are coming back to the store from September 22 to the last day of Worlds!

[slayer-jinx-catface]

Gamma AnomalySep 18, 20173 votes

You mentioned a cut is being donated, how much approximately of the proceeds from the skin sales are being donated? Out of curiosity, I do think this is a great idea.

RiotKushnood Sep 18, 20177 votes

We're matching the 25% that players raise for the World's prize pool to create a charity pool of the same size.

Hungry CancerSep 18, 20177 votes

Since the charities are already chosen for this I don't assume you guys would be willing to do a seperate skin sale or event specifically for Hurricane relief? I live in the Ark-La-Tex and the area could really use some help. They are also in serious need of blood donations and I think it would be really cool if you could find some way to do some kind of LoL blood drive that would reward players for giving blood for hurricane relief (around here most of the blood is being sent to the Houston area where they really need it but I don't know if other areas are doing the same). LifeShare has done something similar for organizatons in the past so I'm sure there's a way you could work together. It wouldn't need to be a big reward like a skin, though that would be badass, but a ward skin or even just an IP boost would help encourage players to donate who otherwise wouldn't even think about it which could really help the area to recover and would take some stress off of other relief organizations that are currently trying to balance helping Harvey victims with preparing for Jose and his friends to hit the East Coast. You guys have such a huge audience that you could really do some good if you encouraged more community service, and it'd get you some good publicity; I don't know of any game that is encouraging players to give and you could get people donating by the hundred thousands I'm sure. I know this would be isolated to the NA but I'm sure other regions have similar situations they could use help with so one charity ward skin could potentially do a lot worldwide.

ªªEràserªªSep 18, 20173 votes

[sg-ezreal] I bought 2 of this one for my main and one for my second account. better give my money to charity riot. LOL

SutekijaSep 18, 201721 votes

Not so humble brag?

Light SovereignSep 18, 20173 votes

I can't wait for Urf to come back so i can play Ap Ashe with this skin.

Skybound SperoSep 19, 20173 votes

I love the idea for the charities but why tf does ashe need another skin?! I get that it looks somewhat nice but really?! She got one recently and not long before the last one as well.. whatever man xD

ScottyBizzleSep 19, 20176 votes

Well, championship skins are given out to the champion that influences the outcome of summer and spring splits the most. Or at least that is what I understand. Ashe had an a great effect and high pick rate among all splits around the world. So as a result she receives a championship skin.

RipplaSep 19, 20172 votes

why the hell would we help you raise money when all you do is ban our accounts to keep us making new accounts to respend money.

byakugan123Sep 19, 201732 votes

maybe dont be toxic? its also optional so you dont have to buy it

Impulse27Sep 19, 201730 votes

So basically you said "I am a toxic player, but I will blame riot for banning me because I make the game unfun for other players, and on top of that I will not help riot to raise money for charity, and on top of that I will complain about it"

Wet Flying VixenSep 21, 20173 votes

LOL SO TRUE, I'm toxic a little, only a little and Riot NEVER banned me, I love riot and I will always love you Riot, thanks you for the new SG skins and especially Ahri <3 I LOVE YOU RIOT Ahri [sg-ahri-2]