North American League of Legends fans have gone a few months without official eSports content since the end of the World Championship in November. But with the start of the new year and Season 10, the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) returns to the air with a revised format.
The LCS was created at the start of Season 3 when the increasing popularity of the competitive scene caused professional play to grow past sporadic tournaments. Since then, fans watch every year as ten different teams, recently franchised in 2018, duke it out through months of matches during the Spring and Summer splits to decide who represents North America going into international events such as the World Championship.
Immediately, the biggest change to the regular season will be an additional broadcast on Monday, turning the LCS into a three-day spectacle. Saturday and Sunday will feature four LCS games while the newly dubbed “Monday Night League” will show two LCS matches at night. Additionally, the end of the season has changed the playoff format for the Spring and Summer splits. First, the Summer split will include the top 8 League of Legends teams from the regular season instead of just the top 6 like previous years and the Spring split, which will continue to do so. Furthermore, both playoffs now feature an expanded loser’s bracket that teams will drop into. Finally, the two splits have been completely divided up with the winner of Spring and Summer advancing to the 2020 Mid-Season Invitational and 2020 World Championship respectively.
Long-time viewers will immediately notice the removal of Championship Points and the Regional Qualifier tournament to determine seeding at Worlds. Even if a team makes it to the finals of the Spring playoffs, they have to work as hard in the Summer to go to playoffs and then the League of Legends World Championship rather than coasting in from points, which occurred many times in previous years. Furthermore, determining seeding based off the results of the Summer playoffs means that the Regional Qualifier based off remaining points is no longer necessary, and historic feats such as Cloud 9’s Cinderella run in 2015 will no longer be possible.
However, these changes are intended to make North America a stronger region at international events. The LCS teams have historically under-performed overall at the World Championship and sending teams based off solely off strong and relevant Summer dominance is a start. On that note, the expanded losers bracket has the benefit of ensuring strong teams aren’t eliminated from playoffs due to a stroke of bad luck and can fight their way back to the finals.
In the end, there may be some viewers tired of watching the same pros fight again for another year in a row. For those fans, there will also be five Academy matches featuring teams with up-and-coming North American talent on Friday and spread throughout the other days of the LCS. In the meantime, players can continue to play League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and wait for other 2020 releases from Riot such as Legends of Runeterra.
The 2020 LCS season starts on Saturday, January 25th.
Source: League of Legends
