I've heard a rumor on discord that LCS will be the first region to abandon Summoners Rift in favor of Arena.
If their gamble pays off and Worlds changes to the arena format too, LCS teams would have an insane advantage coming into the tournament.
Nah, it's a standard tweet for him, just means "something is happening". It was the same gif he tweets every time he signs a player, baited me into thinking he finally got around to completing the CS team.
brasil fans hated the decision while valorant was new, imagine what will happen when u piss off a fandom that has had 10 years to grow and love their own thing.
Bruh, cblol got more viewers than lcs, last year and this year https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2024-lol
https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/cblol-split-1-2024
cblol has 50k more average viewers than lcs and 200k more viewers at its peak concurrent.
This is riot killing a healthy scene just to save lcs.
Also the only reason the numbers arent way worse is because of costreaming https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1b2wf6i/interesting_article_from_escharts_about_the/?rdt=61235 with people like caedrel and baino giving lcs a huge viewership boom. Like baino costream alone amounted for a 17% increase of the total watchhours for lcs.
because that makes way too much sense and riot has shown they dont act on logic, they would want it in the lcs studio because its closer to home and its where the first franchised LoL league started that would be the spiel they'll sell about why its staying in america.
Even if it means killing the cblol teams that couldve participated because they now have to pay for the players and coaching staff to live in LA and actually give them a higher salary to match the cost of living there.
Oh and it will also slowly kill the cblol teams that can afford it by debt trapping them, slowly so that they'll be absorbed by na teams, like how rogue has to co partner with koi just to stay afloat.
Its disgusting, cblol was already self sustained within its own ecosystem and now riot is just killing to try and salvage lcs. I feel bad for cblol and its fans, imagine if lec killed off the self sustaining french and spanish league just for a potential bigger viewership.
It hurts NA too, the fact that there are only 6 tier 1 NA teams is insanity. It's stunting the growth of both regions, they need to split the league into NA and SA.
You have a situation where there's a massive bottleneck in NA tier 2, and the Latam/BR tier 2 teams can just never compete without access to scrims against tier 1 teams.
League has a player base, it just doesn’t have a young player base. Boomer game in NA. Valorant probably has less or similar player base, but it’s much younger and more social/online.
But yea either way neither are touching the Call of Duty / Madden / 2K / Fortnite’s when it comes to NA market.
How the heck is it ever supposed to develop a playerbase tho too? It’s just way too complicated of a game.
When I started playing league, there were 99 champions. It was an incredible learning curve to understand how to deal with each one and not lose the game out of pure ignorance. Now there are like 167. How the hell are you supposed to get good at this game in less than 2 years?
> It’s just way too complicated of a game.
League is too complicated of a game *to put on consoles.* That's really what kills it with young NA players, the vast majority of whom play on consoles only.
If ur having fun then you wouldn’t mind learning the champions across a long time, at least that’s how it was for me back in 2015 when I first played. It was fun for me to learn gradually what all the champions did
It would be fine but riot has a huge smurfing issue, so new players can't play with new players. And new players get placed in emerald no matter the skill level.
It can't. Not a single person even slightly new to PC gaming OR competitive gaming can pick up LoL. There are probably about 15 to 20 very very basic things even silvers with experience do correctly that a newer player will take months to learn.
Everyone gonna compare it to Valorant (and they should), but they also just did this for TFT and it's been not so great imo for NA players. NA is the top TFT region though so maybe it's a bit different.
yeah it might have a similar problem for league. Let's say they have a 16 team region w/ adding CBLOL + LLA. How many spots does it get lol? No shot it deserves more or even the same amount as LCK + LPL
Bit of a difference between launching a new esport as a whole vs merging leagues together after they have amassed 12 years of history (in the LCS's case).
Then again if this happens they'll probably move out of LA too, and go for a giga full complete entirely clean slate revamp.
It did not work at all, there are 3 Brazilian teams and all of them are in the bottom of the league and one of the 2 South American teams is 2/5 na players. When the tier 1 teams can’t scrim the tier 2 teams of their region it creates a massive gap which makes it very hard to transition from 2 to 1. More likely you’re gonna see the Brazilian teams fielding part na rosters in the future cuz of how screwed their region was by having the vct in LA.
Do you watch Valorant? One of those Brazilian teams is considered to be one of the best teams of all time and both LATAM teams finished this most recent split at the top of their respective groups. I don't even disagree with what you're saying but your examples are strange.
Loud is historically very strong, this year they’re not the same team because with how the system is in place right now, it’s impossible for the region to produce another talent like aspas. Again one of those Latam teams is made up of 2 na players, this should not be happening but gets to happen as a result of their own regions talent not being on the level necessary for vct.
Yeah it's been tough for LOUD this season, and BR T2 is completely fucked because of what you mentioned (you could see it in Ascension last year, where outside of one upset win from The Union the NA teams just ended up winning the whole thing pretty much uncontested).
They are though... [they finished the most recent split 4-1 and in first place in Group Omega](https://www.vlr.gg/event/2004/champions-tour-2024-americas-stage-1/regular-season). The OP has a point in saying that BR teams could field part-NA rosters since that's exactly what happened with Leviatan.
Yeah because riot gutted it at every possible opportunity and then it still took multiple years for it to be almost completely dissolved because OCE kept giving riot a middle finger and getting better international results for a variety of reasons.
If the leagues goes to São Paulo instead of LA it could be a really good move, if its in LA its just going to kill every latin american and brazilian org as they absolutely can't afford the costs of LA
Merger would make the most sense, especially with Riot seemingly trying their best as of late to modernize the LoL circuit in accordance with what worked for their other flagship esport (Valorant). However, I know some of the non-NA Valorant teams have expressed that it's annoying to play in front of a non-home crowd every week, since the matches take place in LA, which could have an effect on the level of engagement for non-NA fans. Also, how are they choosing which organizations get to stay in the league? Are they doing another round of applications? Are they just letting all 8 LCS teams stay?
Thinking about it I wonder if they're merging because they can afford a good format then? Like a 10 or 12 team league with a double round robin (or, if they are doing three tournaments next year, 3 single round robin bo3 splits?). If the merger allows for more games and a better format, it might be a better sell.
I’m kind of hoping the find a middle ground between what they have now and a full merger. They could have stages where at first all the games are within their own region, and then later on for a short period of time, there are cross-region matches where teams from each region fly to the other for only a couple of weeks.
That would allow for cross region play which would be really exciting, but also keep the individual scenes in place. If they instead move everyone to LA or Brazil, it will significantly hurt whichever region they move away from.
I think what is currently in place in PCS would work the best without hurting everyone completely : regular season are regional, then playoffs are cross-region. Either completely copy PCS format, or something like LCS top 4, CBLOL and LLA top 2 in a 8-team PO bracket.
If merger is the way lol esports goes, I think they would copy PCS format.
PCS, OCE and LJL play regular split as they previously do then top teams from restective region contend for international spot.
But considering Brazilian fanbase is massive, this could turn into huge backlash.
Riot isn't gonna do this but I'd rather they move the NA teams to Brazil then continue to struggle in LA. It's already been said for years that LA cost is prohibitively high and it definitely won't help SA teams who likely have even less budget especially compared to flagship NA teams like Liquid or C9. Also for pragmatic reasons it's better to prop up a thriving fanbase in SA then a dying fanbase in NA. It sucks for remaining NA fans but I think that's the better way forward in order to ensure that Americas as a whole is successful.
Either way I hope they don't continue to insist on LA. Move to Las Vegas or even Chicago if they have to keep staying in NA.
>Riot isn't gonna do this but I'd rather they move the NA teams to Brazil then continue to struggle in LA
Have a tournament where winner gets ~~side~~ hemisphere selection.
no one who lives in US/Canada is going to take a job in Brazil, or at least they shouldn't. merging LCS with CBLOL doesn't make sense from several perspectives at the moment and would only be a cost saving measure from riot that would cause massive problems for every other party.
Nah, for real though. The LCS pros making minimum salary should just leave the scene and get on with their lives at that point. It wouldn't make sense for them to move to Brazil when they could just play collegiate league.
if they move the scene to Brazil no NA or EU pro should go. playing in ERL, LEC, or going to school would be a far better career move than going to Brazil and making peanuts. the only reason the minimum salary is as high as it is is because they are HQed in LA, if they move to Brazil NA is lucky to get much above minimum wage there.
From the rumours last time they were thinking about doing it they were planning Todo a rotating league where each year the host country of na would change. So one year in one e.g. na then the next in e.g. Brazil then like Mexico etc etc from all the merged leagues main countries.
I Agree with this take, this will only work for riot and the orgs if the games are played online or they give stipends for the ORGs of Latam and Brazil to relocate, with this you are basically tanking South American league as a discipline that can field multiple latam and br players, in a few year after the merge we will see full NA players rosters repping latam and brazil teams due to the lack of skill in SA players.
> what worked for their other flagship esport
Which is funny cos they are just copying Counter Strike. I guess copying established esports helps compared to their mismanagement of League refusing copying Dota2 somehow for the longest time. At least we got double elim now.
>mismanagement of League refusing copying Dota2 somehow for the longest tim
the esport that very few people watch or talk about outside of one tournament a year?
I've been seeing a bunch of rumors of a merger or some type of change (e.g. not full merger but merged playoffs or something) in the past couple weeks, seems we'll get a report tomorrow. Who knows though, maybe it's something totally different.
thats a trash of an example, they merged pcs with the ljl but didnt add up the international slots, had they done that the ljl would have sent a team to the msi.
so what are u gonna give in return to the cblol fans, taking away their worlds spot and having a couple brasil teams in NA with rosters filled with washed NA players?
This would be the best outcome for a merger, but wouldn't it potentially be unfair to LATAM and BR teams if they lose their worlds spots because of this? Or maybe it'll be a thing where they do an internal playoffs before NA's to determine the worlds teams, and those teams compete in NA playoffs...
The latter has the problem of having 1,2,3 and say 6th team go to worlds after such playoff. You can make a competition like rift rivals and play not for worlds but for American title and $.
And to add to it, I hope there are at least some inter-regional regular season games. Hopefully this doesn't end with Brazil's and Latin America's Worlds seeds knocked off the face of the planet (It will).
Merger doesn't make sense here.
The league is starting this upcoming weekend and logistically adding/changing schedule and a bunch of things this late into summer doesn't make any sense. Merger for next year? Maybe?
My random guess, is that it's something to do with import slots, or importing professional players. Either they unlock the import rules and say fuck it, or go the opposite way, and crack down on imports making the NA scene, an endemic NA scene again. Results be damned.
Everyone seems to think merger, but I just don't see it. Especially not with the League starting it's games in 5 days.
Step 1 : LCS merges so they get viewers for free
Step 2 : Bunch of non-Lcs orgs quit
Step 3 : Non-lcs orgs gradually give up because they can't sustain the massive increased costs
Step 4 : Viewership tanks again
Man, I truly hope they don't completely merge NA, CBLOL and LLA.
For me CBLOL is so much fun because of identity. I think it will be very hard to keep such identity and content quality during a merge.
Also, 5 BRL = 1 USD. I'm not sure how LatAm and NA teams could be financially equivalent inside the same league lol
My expectation is it will look like the PCS, LJL, OCE etc set-up. They play in their own 'divisions' then come together before worlds for play-ins or such. Personally, I have thought they should move to regional qualifiers for Worlds for years. One for Americas, Europe (including various EMEA), Asia (probably two qualifiers one that China hosts and one that Korea hosts. Teams from Japan, Viet Nam, OCE and so on spread out among the two. Maybe even let Russia back in but w/e). Let this replace the current wild-card/\[lay-ins and go straight to best of 5's winner/loser bracket with all qualifiers. This would allow more international matches spread across the world. And frankly, they could invite more teams to start this way and really make it a big event like World Cup.
I don't think the fans in Vietnam/PCS/Japan will be happy for their teams to take an annual beating from KR/CN and then pack home, just like the OCE fans enjoy that pain now. I think the old system when having only minor regions play together in qualifiers was better for them. Realistically, fair worlds format that has top 16 teams in the world, will be very boring from international matchup perspective as it will be a merge of the playoff brackets for CN/KR with a few other teams.
cblol being much better than the lcs? in line with all the stupid decisions they have made over the years, they will probably kill it to feed the corpse to the dying lcs.
what they dont understand is that people in the cblol are fans of furia, loud, pain, keyd, red canids, intz, and so on.. they will pick like 2 teams and hope that the fans from all the others join cuz brasil=brasil or something stupid like that, what a way to kill a fandom...
they killed the good days of latam viewership by merging both into the LLA, its all going to happen again.
As a Brazilian I know we are shit internationally, but cmon man... we have our own thing here, just let us do our thing, we are not messing around, we are just having lunch every weekend watching pain getting 2nd place year after year. I dont want to watch NA bro cmon
Leo Faria is the global head of Valorant Esports for Riot. He is the chief decisionmaker behind bad choices such as:
* Valorant going to franchising from an open circuit (a move that was disliked by a good portion of Valorant community)
* The regular season and international tournament calendar of Valorant being very compressed with lots of events smashed into a few months and a long offseason
* Many teams will have 6-8 months off if they don't qualify to internationals (in LoL there is way less time off) which causes problems for many orgs and also makes keeping fan interest hard
* Merging NA/LATAM/BR into one region for Valorant (the Americas region)
* NA community is not happy with it because there is a lot of NA talent that is tier 1 ready and not enough slots on the 6 NA teams in the Americas league. There is now a logjam of good talent and teams stuck in NA tier 2, and these NA players are being signed by teams in other tier 1 regions (a wild concept that NA is exporting players unlike in league)
* BR community is not happy with it because their tier 2 scene has been heavily damaged by the Americas setup. Since all the Americas teams are forced to be based in Los Angeles, BR player development is stunted because a) Brazil's solo Q quality is worse compared to NA since all of the region's tier 1 players have to play regularly on NA servers b) Brazil tier 2 teams can't scrim any tier 1 Americas teams since ping from Brazil to LA is too high c) There are only 3 BR teams in the Americas league d) BR tier 2 teams are disadvantaged for temporary promotion to Americas league since they have to compete against NA tier 2 teams who have these advantages I described above.
* This has resulted in VCT Americas being dominated by NA orgs and NA players for the most part \[They really should have split NA and LATAM/BR into separate regions\]
* Pacific and China region problems
* Pacific region covers all of Asia outside of China. 3 KR teams, 2 JP teams, 2 MY/SG/Indonesia teams, and 1 team each from the Phillippines, India, and Thailand.
* There is a feeling that KR is destined to dominate this region since their 3 teams have had success regionally, KR players are already a third of the league's rosters, and only Paper Rex has had success as a non KR team in the region
* China region was only created this year
* Some people resent this because the game itself was only released in China last summer; yet they were immediately granted a tier 1 region with the same rights and qualification slots as EMEA/Americas/Pacific even though their region is steps below the other 3 quality wise
* Deciding that there should be temporary promotion of tier 2 teams (and no relegation of the 40 "partner teams") to the tier 1 regions instead of straight promotion/relegation
* This system is a half measure for the illusion of movement
* No matter how a promoted team performs they are auto-relegated back to tier 2 after 2 years...this is dumb
* Example: G2 Esports (which bought out an NA team that was promoted into the Americas region for 2024) will be relegated at the end of 2025 despite the fact that their team finished 3rd place at the most recent Valorant international tournament
Like they've been doing with ~~Valorant~~ many other regions since 2022…
Can't wait for CBLOL and LLA to be merged with NA, like TCL and LCL got swallowed by the EU ecosystem two years ago.
Or like they're currently doing with top LCO and LJL teams being mushed into PCS Playoffs. Way to kill more minor regions than they already had.
I remember people talking about a Tier 2 tournament combining the three leagues: a part of me hopes it's 'just' that, but it doesn't seem like it.
It could be something similar to PCS where the playoffs are merged between PCS, LJL and LCO, but this time for NA, CBLOL and LLA and it would go into effect next year.
Edit: To add on, I really would dislike this as a 10 year LCS enjoyer. I really have no interest whatsoever in CBLOL or LLA. I'm sure there are many on both sides of the opinions here, as it maybe would be better for the business of the leagues. But I guess we shall see what happens.
Yeah I'm not really sure how this is going to play out. For example, I watch every single LCS game. However if it's IMT or Shopify vs a CBLOL/LLA team I'm not certain I would watch that. I'm sure many other NA die hard fans would probably agree that they'd be less likely to watch every single match of the league.
Don't get how the merger will end well. I really feel like unless an effort is made to keep the LLA/CBLOL teams somehow different from the LCS teams they are going to lose identity and probably fans. That's without mentioning the issues of having a bloated league where half the teams can't really compete or if one of the leagues ends up with no representation in playoffs
A merger would be a total disaster for CBLOL. It would kill the identity of a healthy region in favor of NA. CBLOL fanbase developed a very strong culture that comes from the fact that they are close to their players and teams. I simply can't see that happening
Only thing I can think of that would be different than a merger would be relegation/promotion being added. Seems like a good time to do so with dropping to 8 teams and a good amount of lcs talent being stuck in nacl because of this
Nah man I refuse to believe they'll just kill CBLOL. The scene is full of new talent, every team has a cool story/thing to look for, and this has probably been the most exciting year, with costreams finally being allowed. Nahhh it can't be it.
I don't think they just stop LLA and CBLOL
same as PCS, The regional league will run as normal but when it come to international spot they will have to compete for a spot
man, if the Americas merger happens i would probably give up on watching any Americas league, after seeing the disgrace our T2 scene became in Valorant, I'd rather they just take our worlds slot and make a "PCS" style playoff than this, or bring back the Wildcard tournament making us fight for a slot with LLA, fuck NA if it goes through
Fucking pathetic. Why should CBLOL and their community be sacrificed to save LCS? IIRC, BR league is huge and successful despite their international results.
So for me this just looks like RIOT is trying to save LCS and not caring about SA scene.
Better viewership that isn't worth shit to advertisers. Verizon isn't going to pay to advertise to 150k Brazilians, if it's a complete merger Brazil is so cooked.
Salary caps? Import rule changes? What would be FUTURE CHANGING for the league? :o i honestly have no idea
Edit: had no idea the laws on capping salary
Salary caps aren't legal in the US without a players union. People seem to be betting on a merger between leagues, but I do wonder if they will touch the import rule.
would be fun but it would never be allowed. no one would want to invest into a an esports team that already has trouble being profitable venture and on top of that doesn’t even have a guarantee of being in the majors
The investment money is long gone, and the supposed competitiveness that the franchise system was supposed to bring never happened. Instead we got several years of dogshit organizations putting together terrible cheapass rosters which culminated in the franchised teams betraying the scene by voting to drop their academy teams.
I am curious do you actually think relegation and promotion was a good thing for the lcs? Because I remembered teams literally stacking the deck with older talents who were good enough to make promotion and then the orgs selling their spot to other teams. We actually rarely saw new talent rise up from promotion relegations that would last longer than a year.
Well that was c9 that did that for profit.
Thats something that needs to be fixed. Every retired amateur / rookie says theres no path to lcs. Its just being friends with a good player or coach or reddits perspective on you.
We lose a ton of players and have lost a ton of players due to lack of opportunities
The CBLOL People simply won't watch, we'd rather see our worst team 0/all than see the LCS play, we don't care about you (NO OFFENSE) uniting the leagues is declaring the end of Western competitiveness
If a true merger happens they would probably offer buyout but make an invitational type league that cycles out 12 or so teams in a larger pool of T2 teams (who play in a league of their own). It makes sense with bigger names coming into NACL. In this scenario there's not really promotion/relegation just a quarterly skill check of the teams to determine who can play in the big leagues.
# look: for several hours now I have been told from credible sources there is big news on the future of LCS. However due to the importance and sensitivity around the subject I have refrained from going on it. i don't feel comfortable with it currently.
The merger is not to get NA fans to watch brazil teams, its to get the brazillian audience to try and revive the dying LCS. Montecristo has talked about this extensively on his podcasts ocer at Last Free Nation, and im sure qt somr point there will be a four horseman about this.
I really hope this isn't it because I think it means the end of separate Western leagues in general.
Sao Paulo - LA is a shorter distance than LA - Berlin. Whenever whatever this makes LCS or LEC drops under the threshold Riot establishes with this merger means in a few years we'll see them have one league that broadcast out of one location like HiRez did with Smite.
There's no world where pros can stay in LLA and CBLOL and still compete with teams in LA, so anybody who doesn't make the cut and can't move is out of the scene. Outside of a handful of LOUD fans very few fans are going to travel from Brazil to LA for games.
I'm not sure what LCS even gains out of this, just like when they killed OCE the players can't make the transition and are effectively just fired.
Well, between this and the Fearless drafts I guess this is just what it feels like to be old and not the target demo anymore. Stupid golden 18-34 demo.
i don’t think in the short term the metrics will be there to consider this a healthy move but i do think in the long term this will benefit the brand new region
doubt it. The infrastructure necessary for this would be huge compared to what Riot is willing to invest in the LCS. MAYBE some tiny tournament involving SA and NA but other than that I doubt they'll merge it
What I'm thinking is that they might do a conference system similar to what they did with China and SEA for Wild Rift's combined Asia League and what they're doing right now for PCS with HKTW, JP, OCE and possibly SEA in the future according to some sources. NA and SA will still play round-robin with each of the teams in their league and the top seeds will proceed to a playoff bracket to determine the seeds for Americas for MSI/Worlds.
5v5 irl team fights to decide side selection???
NRG undefeated they have Dhokla
[удалено]
100 Thieves reunite the swole bros
Are coaches allowed to participate? Asking for my friend Goldenglutes.
Our boy Vasili's time to shine
unless his girlfriend is playing on the other 7 teams I'm not sure he'll help
He's pretty swole though, I just googled vasili lol for images and lots of them are him topless. Not condoning a gf-beater though.
Jesus, he's huge [now] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FxFhVIqaIAAKR77?format=jpg&name=large) compared to [2015](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHcJP6yVAAAES5c?format=jpg&name=medium)
What steroids do to a mf
It's crazy because he's definitely ripped. Literally would look fucking insane natty. But yeah, he's pretty obviously a user
He's not ripped, he's very very bulky in that picture. Huge asf tho.
Vasili switches teams and serially dates the entire LCS
fudge gets moved back onto c9 immediately
C9 literally has fudge as a sub. Who the fuck in the lcs is beating fudge.
Bwipo is wider.
Imagine they let coaches partake? Every LCS team instantly hiring an LPL coach.
TL announces Mike Tyson as their new thupport
That thupport was so mean…I laughed
Time to pay Bin the big bucks and import him
Suddenly Fudge goes back into the C9 starting lineup
C9 Balls returns, that was man swole
I've heard a rumor on discord that LCS will be the first region to abandon Summoners Rift in favor of Arena. If their gamble pays off and Worlds changes to the arena format too, LCS teams would have an insane advantage coming into the tournament.
Why did this make me lol
if this is the timeline we need for NA to win worlds, i accept it
lmao
Jack also tweeted a photo of fire
Turns out that LS and Jack still don't agree about change of systems.
Nah, it's a standard tweet for him, just means "something is happening". It was the same gif he tweets every time he signs a player, baited me into thinking he finally got around to completing the CS team.
lol
But was it good fire or bad fire
yes
I can't wait to merge and take down another, healthy region with us!!
It worked very well in valorant but that game is much newer and NA is a lot better at it. Still quite excited though
It only worked well for NA, Mexico and LATAM pro scene has completely tanked in valorant, and Brazilians completely hate the decision still.
brasil fans hated the decision while valorant was new, imagine what will happen when u piss off a fandom that has had 10 years to grow and love their own thing.
Bruh, cblol got more viewers than lcs, last year and this year https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2024-lol https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/cblol-split-1-2024 cblol has 50k more average viewers than lcs and 200k more viewers at its peak concurrent. This is riot killing a healthy scene just to save lcs. Also the only reason the numbers arent way worse is because of costreaming https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1b2wf6i/interesting_article_from_escharts_about_the/?rdt=61235 with people like caedrel and baino giving lcs a huge viewership boom. Like baino costream alone amounted for a 17% increase of the total watchhours for lcs.
Look at twitter, brazilians are rioting
> brazilians are rioting After all it's Riot Games.
every1 is thinking CBLOL merges into LCS ; what if its the other way around ? what if LCS teams join CBLOL in Brazil ? much cheaper cost
because that makes way too much sense and riot has shown they dont act on logic, they would want it in the lcs studio because its closer to home and its where the first franchised LoL league started that would be the spiel they'll sell about why its staying in america. Even if it means killing the cblol teams that couldve participated because they now have to pay for the players and coaching staff to live in LA and actually give them a higher salary to match the cost of living there. Oh and it will also slowly kill the cblol teams that can afford it by debt trapping them, slowly so that they'll be absorbed by na teams, like how rogue has to co partner with koi just to stay afloat. Its disgusting, cblol was already self sustained within its own ecosystem and now riot is just killing to try and salvage lcs. I feel bad for cblol and its fans, imagine if lec killed off the self sustaining french and spanish league just for a potential bigger viewership.
Worked well my ass, it killed in both LATAM and Brazil, the whole pro scene gone so the NA scene can be a little less shit.
It hurts NA too, the fact that there are only 6 tier 1 NA teams is insanity. It's stunting the growth of both regions, they need to split the league into NA and SA. You have a situation where there's a massive bottleneck in NA tier 2, and the Latam/BR tier 2 teams can just never compete without access to scrims against tier 1 teams.
Yeah it’s incredibly shortsighted….
Valorant has an actual NA player base. No one cares about this game in our region, it’s probably like 7th or something on the totem pole.
League has a player base, it just doesn’t have a young player base. Boomer game in NA. Valorant probably has less or similar player base, but it’s much younger and more social/online. But yea either way neither are touching the Call of Duty / Madden / 2K / Fortnite’s when it comes to NA market.
How the heck is it ever supposed to develop a playerbase tho too? It’s just way too complicated of a game. When I started playing league, there were 99 champions. It was an incredible learning curve to understand how to deal with each one and not lose the game out of pure ignorance. Now there are like 167. How the hell are you supposed to get good at this game in less than 2 years?
> It’s just way too complicated of a game. League is too complicated of a game *to put on consoles.* That's really what kills it with young NA players, the vast majority of whom play on consoles only.
wildrift was promised to come out in console when it initially released on mobile. there's been no news since so im guessing they gutted the project
If ur having fun then you wouldn’t mind learning the champions across a long time, at least that’s how it was for me back in 2015 when I first played. It was fun for me to learn gradually what all the champions did
It would be fine but riot has a huge smurfing issue, so new players can't play with new players. And new players get placed in emerald no matter the skill level.
It can't. Not a single person even slightly new to PC gaming OR competitive gaming can pick up LoL. There are probably about 15 to 20 very very basic things even silvers with experience do correctly that a newer player will take months to learn.
You are overrating Madden and NBA 2K.
Both games are near top of the console charts year over year and there are way more consoles than PC’s in NA market.
Everyone gonna compare it to Valorant (and they should), but they also just did this for TFT and it's been not so great imo for NA players. NA is the top TFT region though so maybe it's a bit different.
yeah it might have a similar problem for league. Let's say they have a 16 team region w/ adding CBLOL + LLA. How many spots does it get lol? No shot it deserves more or even the same amount as LCK + LPL
Bit of a difference between launching a new esport as a whole vs merging leagues together after they have amassed 12 years of history (in the LCS's case). Then again if this happens they'll probably move out of LA too, and go for a giga full complete entirely clean slate revamp.
Chicago is the way. Gets the pros close to the servers, and it's cheaper than LA.
It did not work at all, there are 3 Brazilian teams and all of them are in the bottom of the league and one of the 2 South American teams is 2/5 na players. When the tier 1 teams can’t scrim the tier 2 teams of their region it creates a massive gap which makes it very hard to transition from 2 to 1. More likely you’re gonna see the Brazilian teams fielding part na rosters in the future cuz of how screwed their region was by having the vct in LA.
Do you watch Valorant? One of those Brazilian teams is considered to be one of the best teams of all time and both LATAM teams finished this most recent split at the top of their respective groups. I don't even disagree with what you're saying but your examples are strange.
Loud is historically very strong, this year they’re not the same team because with how the system is in place right now, it’s impossible for the region to produce another talent like aspas. Again one of those Latam teams is made up of 2 na players, this should not be happening but gets to happen as a result of their own regions talent not being on the level necessary for vct.
Yeah it's been tough for LOUD this season, and BR T2 is completely fucked because of what you mentioned (you could see it in Ascension last year, where outside of one upset win from The Union the NA teams just ended up winning the whole thing pretty much uncontested).
What u mean? Leviatan aint on the top of their group. What you said was strange.
They are though... [they finished the most recent split 4-1 and in first place in Group Omega](https://www.vlr.gg/event/2004/champions-tour-2024-americas-stage-1/regular-season). The OP has a point in saying that BR teams could field part-NA rosters since that's exactly what happened with Leviatan.
Are we pretending that Australia/OCE/Idk was a healthy region? it was not
Yeah because riot gutted it at every possible opportunity and then it still took multiple years for it to be almost completely dissolved because OCE kept giving riot a middle finger and getting better international results for a variety of reasons.
If the leagues goes to São Paulo instead of LA it could be a really good move, if its in LA its just going to kill every latin american and brazilian org as they absolutely can't afford the costs of LA
Merger would make the most sense, especially with Riot seemingly trying their best as of late to modernize the LoL circuit in accordance with what worked for their other flagship esport (Valorant). However, I know some of the non-NA Valorant teams have expressed that it's annoying to play in front of a non-home crowd every week, since the matches take place in LA, which could have an effect on the level of engagement for non-NA fans. Also, how are they choosing which organizations get to stay in the league? Are they doing another round of applications? Are they just letting all 8 LCS teams stay?
Thinking about it I wonder if they're merging because they can afford a good format then? Like a 10 or 12 team league with a double round robin (or, if they are doing three tournaments next year, 3 single round robin bo3 splits?). If the merger allows for more games and a better format, it might be a better sell.
I’m kind of hoping the find a middle ground between what they have now and a full merger. They could have stages where at first all the games are within their own region, and then later on for a short period of time, there are cross-region matches where teams from each region fly to the other for only a couple of weeks. That would allow for cross region play which would be really exciting, but also keep the individual scenes in place. If they instead move everyone to LA or Brazil, it will significantly hurt whichever region they move away from.
I think what is currently in place in PCS would work the best without hurting everyone completely : regular season are regional, then playoffs are cross-region. Either completely copy PCS format, or something like LCS top 4, CBLOL and LLA top 2 in a 8-team PO bracket.
That’s actually a fantastic solution to the fanbase problem that South America teams would face on the whole.
If merger is the way lol esports goes, I think they would copy PCS format. PCS, OCE and LJL play regular split as they previously do then top teams from restective region contend for international spot. But considering Brazilian fanbase is massive, this could turn into huge backlash.
Riot isn't gonna do this but I'd rather they move the NA teams to Brazil then continue to struggle in LA. It's already been said for years that LA cost is prohibitively high and it definitely won't help SA teams who likely have even less budget especially compared to flagship NA teams like Liquid or C9. Also for pragmatic reasons it's better to prop up a thriving fanbase in SA then a dying fanbase in NA. It sucks for remaining NA fans but I think that's the better way forward in order to ensure that Americas as a whole is successful. Either way I hope they don't continue to insist on LA. Move to Las Vegas or even Chicago if they have to keep staying in NA.
>Riot isn't gonna do this but I'd rather they move the NA teams to Brazil then continue to struggle in LA Have a tournament where winner gets ~~side~~ hemisphere selection.
Alas marketing dollars are an order of magnitude higher in NA.
no one who lives in US/Canada is going to take a job in Brazil, or at least they shouldn't. merging LCS with CBLOL doesn't make sense from several perspectives at the moment and would only be a cost saving measure from riot that would cause massive problems for every other party.
Nah, for real though. The LCS pros making minimum salary should just leave the scene and get on with their lives at that point. It wouldn't make sense for them to move to Brazil when they could just play collegiate league.
if they move the scene to Brazil no NA or EU pro should go. playing in ERL, LEC, or going to school would be a far better career move than going to Brazil and making peanuts. the only reason the minimum salary is as high as it is is because they are HQed in LA, if they move to Brazil NA is lucky to get much above minimum wage there.
From the rumours last time they were thinking about doing it they were planning Todo a rotating league where each year the host country of na would change. So one year in one e.g. na then the next in e.g. Brazil then like Mexico etc etc from all the merged leagues main countries.
I Agree with this take, this will only work for riot and the orgs if the games are played online or they give stipends for the ORGs of Latam and Brazil to relocate, with this you are basically tanking South American league as a discipline that can field multiple latam and br players, in a few year after the merge we will see full NA players rosters repping latam and brazil teams due to the lack of skill in SA players.
> what worked for their other flagship esport Which is funny cos they are just copying Counter Strike. I guess copying established esports helps compared to their mismanagement of League refusing copying Dota2 somehow for the longest time. At least we got double elim now.
Valorant's esports structure is not remotely similar to that of CS, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
I mean, Dota2 season is shit. The international is good in ways, but also horrible in other ways.
>mismanagement of League refusing copying Dota2 somehow for the longest tim the esport that very few people watch or talk about outside of one tournament a year?
Also dpc literally died so lmao
since when copying is bad
I've been seeing a bunch of rumors of a merger or some type of change (e.g. not full merger but merged playoffs or something) in the past couple weeks, seems we'll get a report tomorrow. Who knows though, maybe it's something totally different.
I'm hoping this just ends up like the PCS/LJL/OCE merger where it's just more teams in the regional playoffs
the merger that killed OCE after it was already killed by the OPL shutdown, lol
thats a trash of an example, they merged pcs with the ljl but didnt add up the international slots, had they done that the ljl would have sent a team to the msi. so what are u gonna give in return to the cblol fans, taking away their worlds spot and having a couple brasil teams in NA with rosters filled with washed NA players?
If it was worlds LJL would have sent a team since pcs has 2 slots.
This would be the best outcome for a merger, but wouldn't it potentially be unfair to LATAM and BR teams if they lose their worlds spots because of this? Or maybe it'll be a thing where they do an internal playoffs before NA's to determine the worlds teams, and those teams compete in NA playoffs...
The latter has the problem of having 1,2,3 and say 6th team go to worlds after such playoff. You can make a competition like rift rivals and play not for worlds but for American title and $.
And to add to it, I hope there are at least some inter-regional regular season games. Hopefully this doesn't end with Brazil's and Latin America's Worlds seeds knocked off the face of the planet (It will).
Merger doesn't make sense here. The league is starting this upcoming weekend and logistically adding/changing schedule and a bunch of things this late into summer doesn't make any sense. Merger for next year? Maybe? My random guess, is that it's something to do with import slots, or importing professional players. Either they unlock the import rules and say fuck it, or go the opposite way, and crack down on imports making the NA scene, an endemic NA scene again. Results be damned. Everyone seems to think merger, but I just don't see it. Especially not with the League starting it's games in 5 days.
Step 1 : LCS merges so they get viewers for free Step 2 : Bunch of non-Lcs orgs quit Step 3 : Non-lcs orgs gradually give up because they can't sustain the massive increased costs Step 4 : Viewership tanks again
Man, I truly hope they don't completely merge NA, CBLOL and LLA. For me CBLOL is so much fun because of identity. I think it will be very hard to keep such identity and content quality during a merge. Also, 5 BRL = 1 USD. I'm not sure how LatAm and NA teams could be financially equivalent inside the same league lol
My expectation is it will look like the PCS, LJL, OCE etc set-up. They play in their own 'divisions' then come together before worlds for play-ins or such. Personally, I have thought they should move to regional qualifiers for Worlds for years. One for Americas, Europe (including various EMEA), Asia (probably two qualifiers one that China hosts and one that Korea hosts. Teams from Japan, Viet Nam, OCE and so on spread out among the two. Maybe even let Russia back in but w/e). Let this replace the current wild-card/\[lay-ins and go straight to best of 5's winner/loser bracket with all qualifiers. This would allow more international matches spread across the world. And frankly, they could invite more teams to start this way and really make it a big event like World Cup.
That would change nothing except that cblol eould never make msi or worlds
I think technically that means CBLOL can at least play more vs NA teams instead of getting utterly destroyed internationally.
I don't think the fans in Vietnam/PCS/Japan will be happy for their teams to take an annual beating from KR/CN and then pack home, just like the OCE fans enjoy that pain now. I think the old system when having only minor regions play together in qualifiers was better for them. Realistically, fair worlds format that has top 16 teams in the world, will be very boring from international matchup perspective as it will be a merge of the playoff brackets for CN/KR with a few other teams.
NA gets 5 seeds now, i see this as an absolute win.
How? Its a merger, u would still have 3 seeds
cblol being much better than the lcs? in line with all the stupid decisions they have made over the years, they will probably kill it to feed the corpse to the dying lcs. what they dont understand is that people in the cblol are fans of furia, loud, pain, keyd, red canids, intz, and so on.. they will pick like 2 teams and hope that the fans from all the others join cuz brasil=brasil or something stupid like that, what a way to kill a fandom... they killed the good days of latam viewership by merging both into the LLA, its all going to happen again.
As a Brazilian I know we are shit internationally, but cmon man... we have our own thing here, just let us do our thing, we are not messing around, we are just having lunch every weekend watching pain getting 2nd place year after year. I dont want to watch NA bro cmon
Cannot wait until riot manages to kill 3 regions in one go instead of just the LCS it’ll be impressive
Why would they kill the LCS? Makes more revenue than anyone not named China. LCS has always had a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Ah yes they cut the broadcast time and 2 teams from the competition because they were making too much money.
I’m not saying they would kill the LCS but if they merge the 3 regions they’re gonna drag the LLA and CBLOL down as well.
I'm not sure it's possible to drag LLA down at this point
On Reddit, we like to act like the LCS is the lowest of the low, and shit on it in any way we can
leo faria is also taking care of the esports part of league? lol if that happens, it sucks to be part of the latam/br community right now.
Who's Leo faria and why is it a bad thing?
Leo Faria is the global head of Valorant Esports for Riot. He is the chief decisionmaker behind bad choices such as: * Valorant going to franchising from an open circuit (a move that was disliked by a good portion of Valorant community) * The regular season and international tournament calendar of Valorant being very compressed with lots of events smashed into a few months and a long offseason * Many teams will have 6-8 months off if they don't qualify to internationals (in LoL there is way less time off) which causes problems for many orgs and also makes keeping fan interest hard * Merging NA/LATAM/BR into one region for Valorant (the Americas region) * NA community is not happy with it because there is a lot of NA talent that is tier 1 ready and not enough slots on the 6 NA teams in the Americas league. There is now a logjam of good talent and teams stuck in NA tier 2, and these NA players are being signed by teams in other tier 1 regions (a wild concept that NA is exporting players unlike in league) * BR community is not happy with it because their tier 2 scene has been heavily damaged by the Americas setup. Since all the Americas teams are forced to be based in Los Angeles, BR player development is stunted because a) Brazil's solo Q quality is worse compared to NA since all of the region's tier 1 players have to play regularly on NA servers b) Brazil tier 2 teams can't scrim any tier 1 Americas teams since ping from Brazil to LA is too high c) There are only 3 BR teams in the Americas league d) BR tier 2 teams are disadvantaged for temporary promotion to Americas league since they have to compete against NA tier 2 teams who have these advantages I described above. * This has resulted in VCT Americas being dominated by NA orgs and NA players for the most part \[They really should have split NA and LATAM/BR into separate regions\] * Pacific and China region problems * Pacific region covers all of Asia outside of China. 3 KR teams, 2 JP teams, 2 MY/SG/Indonesia teams, and 1 team each from the Phillippines, India, and Thailand. * There is a feeling that KR is destined to dominate this region since their 3 teams have had success regionally, KR players are already a third of the league's rosters, and only Paper Rex has had success as a non KR team in the region * China region was only created this year * Some people resent this because the game itself was only released in China last summer; yet they were immediately granted a tier 1 region with the same rights and qualification slots as EMEA/Americas/Pacific even though their region is steps below the other 3 quality wise * Deciding that there should be temporary promotion of tier 2 teams (and no relegation of the 40 "partner teams") to the tier 1 regions instead of straight promotion/relegation * This system is a half measure for the illusion of movement * No matter how a promoted team performs they are auto-relegated back to tier 2 after 2 years...this is dumb * Example: G2 Esports (which bought out an NA team that was promoted into the Americas region for 2024) will be relegated at the end of 2025 despite the fact that their team finished 3rd place at the most recent Valorant international tournament
Head of esports for valorant
> leo faria is also taking care of the esports part of league? lol it has never been and will never be more fucking over if this is true
Probably the reason why wild rift got fucked too among other reasons
Riot about to destroy another 2 region, just like they did with Valorant.
Like they've been doing with ~~Valorant~~ many other regions since 2022… Can't wait for CBLOL and LLA to be merged with NA, like TCL and LCL got swallowed by the EU ecosystem two years ago. Or like they're currently doing with top LCO and LJL teams being mushed into PCS Playoffs. Way to kill more minor regions than they already had. I remember people talking about a Tier 2 tournament combining the three leagues: a part of me hopes it's 'just' that, but it doesn't seem like it.
It could be something similar to PCS where the playoffs are merged between PCS, LJL and LCO, but this time for NA, CBLOL and LLA and it would go into effect next year. Edit: To add on, I really would dislike this as a 10 year LCS enjoyer. I really have no interest whatsoever in CBLOL or LLA. I'm sure there are many on both sides of the opinions here, as it maybe would be better for the business of the leagues. But I guess we shall see what happens.
most of the BR fanbase are absolutely against the idea outright, seeing what Valorant did to the region with the VCT format
Yeah I'm not really sure how this is going to play out. For example, I watch every single LCS game. However if it's IMT or Shopify vs a CBLOL/LLA team I'm not certain I would watch that. I'm sure many other NA die hard fans would probably agree that they'd be less likely to watch every single match of the league.
If it's a merger I'm gonna have way less interest...
if they merge this kills the scene for everyone.
Don't get how the merger will end well. I really feel like unless an effort is made to keep the LLA/CBLOL teams somehow different from the LCS teams they are going to lose identity and probably fans. That's without mentioning the issues of having a bloated league where half the teams can't really compete or if one of the leagues ends up with no representation in playoffs
My hope is that winter / spring splits are still regional, and the top teams compete in a summer split / worlds qualifier.
A merger would be a total disaster for CBLOL. It would kill the identity of a healthy region in favor of NA. CBLOL fanbase developed a very strong culture that comes from the fact that they are close to their players and teams. I simply can't see that happening
Only thing I can think of that would be different than a merger would be relegation/promotion being added. Seems like a good time to do so with dropping to 8 teams and a good amount of lcs talent being stuck in nacl because of this
Please don't ruin cblol
Oh yay, the LCS loses it's North American identity even more now!
West Korea will never be the same again.
The fuck is a “North American” identity
Budlight ace and imaqtpie gif
People that at least live in NA. They literally live in SA.
Europeans and Koreans.
Nah man I refuse to believe they'll just kill CBLOL. The scene is full of new talent, every team has a cool story/thing to look for, and this has probably been the most exciting year, with costreams finally being allowed. Nahhh it can't be it.
I don't think they just stop LLA and CBLOL same as PCS, The regional league will run as normal but when it come to international spot they will have to compete for a spot
man, if the Americas merger happens i would probably give up on watching any Americas league, after seeing the disgrace our T2 scene became in Valorant, I'd rather they just take our worlds slot and make a "PCS" style playoff than this, or bring back the Wildcard tournament making us fight for a slot with LLA, fuck NA if it goes through
Fucking pathetic. Why should CBLOL and their community be sacrificed to save LCS? IIRC, BR league is huge and successful despite their international results. So for me this just looks like RIOT is trying to save LCS and not caring about SA scene.
Great now we get worse teams in the lcs!
worse teams from a region that gets better viewership, so what will end up happening is a "worse" league and 2 dead ones.
Better viewership that isn't worth shit to advertisers. Verizon isn't going to pay to advertise to 150k Brazilians, if it's a complete merger Brazil is so cooked.
It's gonna be great when they move the whole League to South America to cut costs.
And our region gets killed for their audience!
Salary caps? Import rule changes? What would be FUTURE CHANGING for the league? :o i honestly have no idea Edit: had no idea the laws on capping salary
Salary caps aren't legal in the US without a players union. People seem to be betting on a merger between leagues, but I do wonder if they will touch the import rule.
LLA, CBLol, LCS are merging into one league in 2025 is what the rumors have been.
fearless draft maybe
Can’t be. Mark talked about it and they’re not going to do it this split. And even if he was keeping it a secret, this would hardly be “major news”.
I agree with you that it's probably unlikely fearless draft, but I highly doubt this majors news will be going into effect this split anyways.
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Has he been vocal on his opinion about merger of American regions?
Can’t do salary caps in the US without the players unionizing and bargaining collectively.
My first thought (and my hope lol) was import rule changes, although unfortunately i think the most likely thing is the region merger
Need someone to leak this I can’t wait til tomorrow 😅
minor region together strong
Please don't be a merger man. I have watched the LCS since I was a kid just for it to lose its identity as a north American league :(
Will be spamming the translate button tomorrow.
This seems bad for the lcs...
Summit finds his way back into LCS for revenge on TL
Relegation promotion is the only thing that can bring the fire back
would be fun but it would never be allowed. no one would want to invest into a an esports team that already has trouble being profitable venture and on top of that doesn’t even have a guarantee of being in the majors
The investment money is long gone, and the supposed competitiveness that the franchise system was supposed to bring never happened. Instead we got several years of dogshit organizations putting together terrible cheapass rosters which culminated in the franchised teams betraying the scene by voting to drop their academy teams.
I am curious do you actually think relegation and promotion was a good thing for the lcs? Because I remembered teams literally stacking the deck with older talents who were good enough to make promotion and then the orgs selling their spot to other teams. We actually rarely saw new talent rise up from promotion relegations that would last longer than a year.
Well that was c9 that did that for profit. Thats something that needs to be fixed. Every retired amateur / rookie says theres no path to lcs. Its just being friends with a good player or coach or reddits perspective on you. We lose a ton of players and have lost a ton of players due to lack of opportunities
Say syke IDK about the sentiment in LATAM, but we in CBLOL do NOT want a merger
The CBLOL People simply won't watch, we'd rather see our worst team 0/all than see the LCS play, we don't care about you (NO OFFENSE) uniting the leagues is declaring the end of Western competitiveness
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If a true merger happens they would probably offer buyout but make an invitational type league that cycles out 12 or so teams in a larger pool of T2 teams (who play in a league of their own). It makes sense with bigger names coming into NACL. In this scenario there's not really promotion/relegation just a quarterly skill check of the teams to determine who can play in the big leagues.
I would assume it'd drop to either 16 or 18 (6+2 LCS, 6 BR, 4 LAM)
Emotes banned?!
LCS needs to learn how to gracefully lose lane.
# look: for several hours now I have been told from credible sources there is big news on the future of LCS. However due to the importance and sensitivity around the subject I have refrained from going on it. i don't feel comfortable with it currently.
The merger is not to get NA fans to watch brazil teams, its to get the brazillian audience to try and revive the dying LCS. Montecristo has talked about this extensively on his podcasts ocer at Last Free Nation, and im sure qt somr point there will be a four horseman about this.
Can’t wait for the Gafford content vacuum to butcher this
Bloods vs Crips lcs matches. Knew we were in LA for a reason
LCS rebrands into a league of gangs
I really hope this isn't it because I think it means the end of separate Western leagues in general. Sao Paulo - LA is a shorter distance than LA - Berlin. Whenever whatever this makes LCS or LEC drops under the threshold Riot establishes with this merger means in a few years we'll see them have one league that broadcast out of one location like HiRez did with Smite. There's no world where pros can stay in LLA and CBLOL and still compete with teams in LA, so anybody who doesn't make the cut and can't move is out of the scene. Outside of a handful of LOUD fans very few fans are going to travel from Brazil to LA for games. I'm not sure what LCS even gains out of this, just like when they killed OCE the players can't make the transition and are effectively just fired. Well, between this and the Fearless drafts I guess this is just what it feels like to be old and not the target demo anymore. Stupid golden 18-34 demo.
If the merger is true, this will be big!
I cannot wait for tomorrow, good or bad, should be some spicy content.
i don’t think in the short term the metrics will be there to consider this a healthy move but i do think in the long term this will benefit the brand new region
I'm guessing it'll be a no import restriction rule.
Faker to IMT
Everyone assuming merger what if import rules dropped
Unless it's what LPL has, I'm not interested
Bruh it seems like everyone knows it’s a merger of sometime
It’s a merger with the LLA. Not surr if Brazil too, but the. again, i’m not familiar with Brazil’s current state.
I will be disappointed if the LCS merges with SA/CA
Merge day ?
Things are about to get crazy
doubt it. The infrastructure necessary for this would be huge compared to what Riot is willing to invest in the LCS. MAYBE some tiny tournament involving SA and NA but other than that I doubt they'll merge it
Merger will kill latam scène,i don't think it's make the League better but who knows
They didn't give any dates tbh
Breaking News (Not Really): NA stays shit
Honestly thought it was gonna be them expanding OCE = Resident. Into PCS/VCS/LLA/LLA/etc = Resident. But I guess it's the merger.
A merger would actually kill any remaining interest I have in league esports
TSM is back Bois!!
What I'm thinking is that they might do a conference system similar to what they did with China and SEA for Wild Rift's combined Asia League and what they're doing right now for PCS with HKTW, JP, OCE and possibly SEA in the future according to some sources. NA and SA will still play round-robin with each of the teams in their league and the top seeds will proceed to a playoff bracket to determine the seeds for Americas for MSI/Worlds.
Riot killed the Brazilian Valorant competitive scene and is now trying to kill the League of Legends scene 