The blue team has an innate advantage in League of Legends. This isn’t due to first pick, given that the modes without draft like Blind Summoner’s Rift or ARAM share that same trait. The camera is simply better for blue team players.
The player’s HUD is located at the bottom of their screen. This means that for a blue side player, it blocks out an allied area – on the top lane, my HUD makes me see what’s around my tower behind me less precisely. On the other hand, for a red side player, the HUD blocks out part of the area the opponents are playing in. The latter actually affects gameplay, while the former almost never has any impact.
In practice, a red team player has slightly less usable screen space, and needs to move their camera more often.
Statistics reflect this as well. Over the entire roster, across all ranks, all champions’ win rates are higher by around 1.5 point on the blue side, on average. In ARAM, this difference goes up to 4 points, still in favor of the blue team.
Rumble can’t see around himself when attempting to cast Equalizer from the red team
Naturally, Riot Games is aware of this. Riot’s solution was to say that if the blue side is innately stronger, we’ll just put the better team on the red side. However, it seems that as of 2025, this has been quietly removed. As it has been a feature of League of Legends for 15 years, let’s look at how it worked.
The two teams in a game can’t have the exact same average MMR. One of the two teams has to have a higher one. Therefore, that team goes on the weaker side.
However, in the vast majority of games, both teams have virtually the same MMR. The blue team will have an average MMR of 1500, while the red team will be at 1502, for example. The two sides are even, so there is nothing balancing the blue side’s advantage. This is why the blue team’s win rate is indeed higher.
Now, what happens when there aren’t enough people queuing up at the same time? In Iron, and in Master to Challenger (the extremes of the ladder), the population is low. At night, the problem extends to Diamond players as fewer people are playing. In that case, there can be an actual imbalance between the two teams. If we don’t have ten players of the same level queuing simultaneously, one team will actually be better than the other. That will be the red team.
As a result, until 2025, the red side had a higher win rate in Iron and Master to Challenger.
This is no longer the case, and as of today, the blue side’s advantages are fully unchecked across all ranks.
The red team has historically suffered from side-specific bugs. Here are some examples:
The blue team is definitely stronger in League of Legends.
Featured Image Source: Riot Games
21+ and present in VA. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
