In a previous article, I had written about the numerous exciting changes arriving in Season 11 of League of Legends that would affect the NA LCS (North American League of Legends Championship Series). One of these changes I had briefly mentioned was the complete overhaul of the LCS format— the order by how teams, and the games between them, are organized throughout the season. Understanding that esports, despite rapidly growing in popularity, is still a relatively young and somewhat niche medium of entertainment, I will provide a brief explanation of the new 2021 LCS format as well as the tournaments after the seasonal splits leading up to the biggest esports event in all of the world, the League of Legends’ Worlds Championship.
As of the beginning of 2021, a new tournament was introduced named the LCS Lock In tournament. The tournament is structured into two phases; a group stage followed by a single elimination bracket. Before the group stage, the top 2 teams from the previous year will draft for the opposing team’s bracket, with a total of five teams in each group, and ten teams overall. Once the brackets are finalized, both groups will play in a best of one, single round robin (a with four days of play. The top four teams from each group will then advance to the single elimination bracket, knocking out 2 teams in the process. The team will then compete to become the LCS Lock In Champions, earning 150k dollars and donating 50k dollars to the charity of their choice. The introduction of the Lock In tournament allows teams to play and experiment with their new rosters without affecting their standings in the regular season split.
After the Lock In tournament, the teams have 6 weeks to either improve or cement their gameplay as shown by the result of the Lock In tournament. Then they proceed into the Spring Split, which combined with the Summer Split, make up the entire competitive season for the LCS and help to determine which teams go to the Worlds Championship. The Spring Split will consist of five games a day, three games a week for six weeks of play, organized into a double round robin. Each game won or lost will determine the standings of each team.
After the Spring Split is completed, It’s time to determine which team is the Spring Split Champion and worthy of being sent to the Mid Season Invitational (MSI) to represent their region. This is decided by the Mid-Season Showdown, a tournament which takes the top six teams from the Spring Split and puts them into a double-elimination bracket. The champion is then named the Spring Split Champion and sent to MSI to represent NA on the international stage.
MSI is one of only two international tournaments in professional League of Legends. Although only the best teams of each region are allowed to participate in MSI, how each team fairs against opposing regions is determined by this tournament. This is one of the most exciting and anticipated events in all of League of Legends professional play for it is the first event in which teams play against international competitors, the winners are crowned the best region during mid-season, and grants a guaranteed spot in the most important event of the year; the Worlds Championship. Although the structure of MSI sometimes varies over the years, this was the structure of 2019’s MSI to give guidance still. 13 regions participated in the tournament which consisted of three phases: the play-in stage, groups stage, and knockout stage. During the play-in stage, the eight teams from the 13 were selected by their past performances and competitive strength, and then divided into two pools of four. Each pool played games in a double-round robin, best of one series until the winners from each pool faced the representative teams from either the LCS or LMS to determine who moved to the groups stage. There were 6 slots for the group stage and the winners of the play-ins advanced to the first two slots in the group stage while the losers competed for the third. The 3 winning teams were then joined by representative teams from the LEC (Europe), LCK (Korea), and LPL (China) and immediately advanced to the knock-out stage. There the teams were organized into a single bracket elimination to determine the MSI champions. The MSI champion team would then gain the MSI title, and a guaranteed spot at the Worlds Championship.
The regular LCS season will then continue into the Summer Split which is organized into a triple round robin. During the Summer Split, 15 games are played every week for nine weeks. After the Summer Split, each teams combined records from the Spring and Summer Split will determine which 8 of the 10 teams makes it to the LCS Championship.
At the LCS Championship, the remaining 8 teams will play in a double elimination bracket that determines the top 3 teams of the region, qualifying them to participate at the Worlds Championship.
The League of Legends’ Worlds Championship is one of the most anticipated and successful esport event in all of esports history, pulling in millions of viewers every year since 2012, and being the most watched esport event of all esports. Worlds’ games are organized into 3 stages; the play-in stage, the groups stage, and the knockout stage. The play-ins stage consists of two pools of 5 teams, where each pool plays a best of one, single round robin. The teams with the worst record of these games in their individual pools will be eliminated, while the teams with the best records are granted spots in the groups stage. The remaining teams will then compete for the last two spots in the groups stage. The four winners of the play-ins will then be placed into four separate groups. The four groups will also include the top three teams from other regions, equalling a total of 16 different teams. Each group will play a best of one, double round robin until the two teams with the best record from each group are chosen to move to the knockout stage. In the knockout stage, the last remaining eight teams will play in a single elimination, best of 5 matches, leading up to the Worlds Finals. The last two remaining teams at the end of the bracket will face off to compete for the title of Worlds Champions. Whoever wins will be crowned the greatest team in the world for that year.
I hope with this you might understand the format of the entire LCS schedule and even be encouraged to watch it!
The Beat @APU 
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