The website Blix.gg dropped a damn bomb last nightrevealing the new LEC format. Even if it takes wait for official confirmation from League of Legends publisher, this is what this esport media presents. Now there would be no more two but three splits in Europe, still with 10 teams. These segments would be broken down as follows:
- a relatively busy three-week regular season (Superweeks), with the top eight teams advancing to the next stage
- a GSL (Global Starcraft League) format in BO3, the four best teams move on to the playoffs
- Classic playoffs in BO5
What is the GSL format?
The GSL format presented in the media is a beast double elimination (which is the real name of this format, not at all invented by Starcraft II [même si ça reste un super jeu, mais on s’égare]). For those unfamiliar with this term, this means that each team will have “two lives”. If a team loses its first match, it falls into the loser bracket but is not yet eliminated. It is only by losing a second time, that she finds herself eliminated.
The playoffs will also be double elimination (not specified if the teams that lost a life regain it or not, but since apparently it’s a different tournament, it would be logical for it to return, if not just change the number of rounds to be won), except that ‘instead of being in BO3, they will be played in BO5. Teams will score points in each split, based on their final standings.
Once the 3 splits are completed, the playoffs (which we will call Great Playoffs to avoid confusion) will be played between the 6 best teams throughout the season. The top three teams from the Super Playoffs will go to the Worlds, with seeding corresponding to their ranking.
Why is this format already a problem?
the LEC is a closed league, where teams paid dearly (very dearly) to participate. Only with this format, it means thata team could only play 27 days a year (in front of the cameras, 3 times 3 weeks of 3 days of competition). Today with a two splits from LEC, just in the regular season, it’s minimum 36 days ([6 semaines de 2 matchs + 2 Superweeks de 3 matchs] x 2 splits). How to solicit interesting sponsors with this 25% loss of exposure time ? The goal of esport teams remains to earn money (or failing that, not to lose it) and on that, this system seems more than flawed. Very quickly a separation is likely to occur between the teams with a large budget and those which have lesscreating a gap that cannot be closed, as the smaller teams will never be able to attract sponsors to allow them to compete.
To avoid losses, they will then have to pay their players and technical teams lesswhich in addition to not attracting the best elements (but we will say that ambitious young wolves will always want to rub shoulders with old kings), risk make the status of technical players/teams even more precarious in less strong teams. And above all, how to keep intact the motivation of players who, after three weeks of competition, will not play for two monthswhile the strongest teams will play with each other to prepare for the rest of the tournament?
Of course, one could argue that this is already somewhat the case in LEC, Rogue prefers scrim G2 or Fnatic, rather than BDS or Astralis, but is still “forced” to do so from time to time (if only to keep an eye on their progress and avoid getting caught in BO1). With this new format, the gap is likely to widen even further between the top and bottom of the LEC leaderboard. And usually when a league is very polarizedhis international performances are rather disappointing. If the return of the BO3 in the “regular” season is a positive point, we will have to wait for more precise explanations to know how all this managedif ever this rumor turns out to be true.
esport-lol
It’s still too early to talk about a superteam at SK Gaming. But fans can rub their hands. While it seems that the team’s budget will explode, the next competitive season of League of Legends promises to be exciting with big recruits on the horizon.