John Needham at the League of Lengeds Worlds event.
John Needham at the League of Lengeds Worlds event.
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Riot Games’ John Needham talks about the future of esports

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 13 min

This week Riot Games promoted John Needham to the president of esports as it doubled down on its investments in esports titles like League of Legends, Wild Rift, and Valorant.

In this new position at Los Angeles-based Riot Games, Needham is leading the organization under which all of Riot’s esports titles and operations will now be unified.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.