The LCS Is Over

Everything just changed in tier 1 League of Legends.

Yesterday, Riot announced a series of sweeping changes including a new international tournament, regions in Asia merging together and the LCS forming a pan-Americas conference league with Latin American and Brazil.

Some have welcomed the changes as necessary for the future of LoL esports in the Americas – but there are many angry voices too.

Here’s all the details.

Music used under license from Associated Production Music LLC (”APM”).

[muniz]

brasils problem with the merger is that despite LOUD being the sole champion for 4 whole splits weve been having a blast lately, the co-streams doubled viewership and there are a lot of new and exciting rosters promissing long term projects that now might not have a chance on center stage, and for what? so NA can keep their investiments safe? be sure, the transition will be rough and retaliation is to be expected, majorly depends on which teams will be demoted, thing is, every single team this split has something going for them, FURIA is the safest one to kick out, but thats it, everyone else has too big of a fanbase or at least a reason to watch their games.

If we could keep all of our teams there would be no problem, question is that 40% of our players and their staff will have no where to go, most will go for academy, which brings a whole new problem on itself. We are at a huge loss with the merger, what does NA has to offer? better pay for our players? most people in the country think they are being paid way too much already, theres nothing to be gained for the average viewer and our league has never been better.

And people somehow are surprised we are mad, we dont care about LCS and LS's point of a domino effect is fear mongering, our league is solid and self sustainable, we dont need a constant stream of investiments to keep our doors open, we have solid organizations with strong sponsorship and our operational costs are significantly lower than LCS's

This change will be met with pitchforks.

We already proved we dont need riot to make a profitable tournament, this merger is the biggest red flag for LCS's survivability, i would be scared if i were you

All that been said, RIP LLA

[jonasbrownlee]

relegation should be all teams not just guest spot that is dumb.

[erenmos]

US: our region is failing at e-sports what do we do?

Lets destroy other regions so they are forced to watch ours. BRILLIANT!

[lankymario]

the day they got rid of relegation was the day I stopped watching league esports

[joeypwns]

The only idea I like is that champions will not be able to be picked twice, that will be cool.

[brunoxd]

As a cblol fan, this is terrible. Our league was thriving in viewership, getting record numbers every split and now they are gonna sacrifice 4 of our teams just to try to save the LCS. We are getting screwed for something that wasn’t even our fault.

[gustavorodriguesdeandrade]

Tbh riot just made brazillians mad with lcs, like we dont care we suck we just want to have our special trash, also it will kinda destroy all the academy teams 4 teams and ppl that actual work for those teams. In the end it will probably fail cuz we won’t improve and the market will be reduced

[LMew]

Oh boy, I sure love to see my small regional league from the south, that took much effort and passion for us to build by ourselves alone, being eating alive little by little for the survival of some ppl from the north that destroyed themselves, the CIA must be proud at least.

[Lugaloho]

Sorry for the long comment.

I am Brazilian, but have been living in the U.S. for 5 years, so let me try my best to explain what is happening from our point of view.

You need to understand that Brazilians and Americans watch LoL e-Sports for different reasons. Here in the America you guys want to watch a good gameplay and want to see your League performing good in the Worlds. We Brazilians want that too, but not to the same extent, we know we are never going to reach Asia levels of greatness, but we enjoy watching our favorite players and teams play. Most of us have a favorite team, and we are very passionate about that team, including me as paiN Gaming fan, I started playing League in 2012 and stopped in 2015, but has never stopped watching my paiN Gaming play, and if for some reason they were to stop to exist, I would completely stop watch CBLOL. And trying to speak for my people, I strongly believe this happens to most of us, so the fact that 4 teams will be out of the league means that a good chunk of fans will stop watching it.

My other point is that the Brazilian economy is really bad, our country’s GDP is the same as the CITY of New York, so trying to keep our best players from leaving Brazil and going to the U.S. will be almost impossible.

So you see a lot of Brazilians saying that Riot is doing that only to save LCS, and although these people are exaggerating a little bit, I don’t disagree with them, Riot Games is indeed being hypocrite. Compare what they are doing in the Americas with what they are doing in Oceania and part of Asia. Here they are mixing the dying LLA with the rising CBLOL, but in Asia they are mixing Japan and Australia, which are 6, 800 km from each other, when they have South Korea (a “healthy” league) that is only 942 km. Meaning, that they are not saving the weaker leagues by putting them with stronger leagues, they only saving the LCS, by trying to get the viewers from Brazil.

I believe that most of us would care less if Riot would say that we don’t classify to Worlds and MSI anymore than to this change, because we really don’t care about the other countries’ league, we just want to have a healthy Brazilian championship that we can follow the teams we love.

With that being said, F LLA…

[themagician]

Since idk any other riot devs except Phreak, I’m just gonna blame Phreak for this

[DKtrek]

Yep, franchising for a volatile MOBA game is a disaster. Dota has existed for a very long time without franchising and I could say that they have a more exciting format. Just some random teams taking a chance at glory. Not this LCS where the same teams compete and the talent pool is not expanding.

[sisco]

i like the new change in champion playability but merging regions is ass.

[hecksters]

All that guarantees is CBLOL and whatever LLA teams they get WILL get constantly shitcanned by whoever's left of the LCS by the regional finals, losing out a Brazilian representative 💀💀

[Informed_Flea]

Not sure how the LCS has survived this long, its been at least 5 straight years where no one watches the LCS and knows the result immediately for NA in Worlds, which is a group stage instant out

[DuhBla]

They should just do away with franchising completely and take a page out of Dota 2 or Apex Legends' system where its truly a "fight-for-your-spot" system, introduce a pro-circuit where points = secure a spot in Worlds. Anyone, any team playing from their mother's basements can compete on the top of the scene if they're good enough. Make it so that all the "top-tier professionals" need to always perform or they lose their spot to no-names, would make the game very entertaining to watch again.

[aplsed]

Riot introducing what's basically DSR in Smash terms into LoL Esports was not in my "2024 Gaming Bingo" card

[gogogomes]

Give me back my League! CBLOL did its bit. We created our own thing, we created our own fandoms, we made our own names, we have our own legends, we forged our own rivalries. While so many other leagues in the world were dying, we were thriving, we were stable. We did everything Riot said they wanted us to do; we were the model case of everything Riot said it wanted—a self-contained, "self-sufficient" league. And what is our reward? To see four of our teams get killed, to see our entire academy (which fucking works!) also die! In 12 years of existence, CBLOL had nine different teams that have won the championship! They said they would pick only six teams to go to the new conference. There are five teams that play today with three or more championships. Are we supposed to just give up our history? To just let a multi-championship-winning org die? For what? To help a bunch of spoiled rich fucks who don't know what competition is even if it smacked them in the face? All of this is just sad and unfair.

[Calendarguy]

The day has come family, let us embrace the final split of LCS

[matheo]

So glad on how theScore team always do their research! This is probably the first non-brazillian platform that cared AT ALL to at least shine some light into the reasons why CBLOL audience was so frustrated and truly presents a neutral multiperspective of the announcement, while others such as LS only care to patronize people, hardstuck on their tunnel vision on "how amazing" the merge is for his own region and audience since, yeah, LCS teams competing against BR parties with CBLOL crowd hype is one hell of a boost for his own content, but do we as a region care at all for LCS players and teams AT THE EXPENSE of axing 40% of our competitive scene, with teams, players and local rivalry history that we DO care about? Ah yeah, sure sounds fantastic cutting off a limb so someone else can use it as crutch!

[mosdeadly]

If were just merging leagues for bigger veiwers lets merge LPL and LCK. That way LCK fans will start watching the LPL teams its a win win. Any arguement against this merger can be used against the cblol and lcs merger.