Riot Games has unveiled changes for the League of Legends European Championship (LEC), impacting both the League of Legends World Championship and the Mid-Season Invitational starting in 2024.
The LEC, the premier professional League of Legends esports league in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, features ten competing teams. In 2023, Riot Games revamped the league, introducing a third Winter Split and changing the qualification process for international tournaments.
Although there is no official announcement yet about the location for MSI 2024, Riot has already revealed that the 2024 World Championship will be held in London at the O2 arena, which has the second-highest seating capacity in the U.K. It's been almost ten years since the U.K. last hosted a Worlds event on its home soil.
Changes for the 2024 Summer Split will focus more on teams. Championship Point tiebreakers will see modifications as well. The league's goal is to enhance fairness, transparency and excitement for fans and players.
Maximillian Schmidt, the director of League esports in EMEA, said the league needs a more transparent system. He said changes in 2024 will aim to address the lack of clarity in the previous year. The new system aims to prioritize playoff performance over regular-season splits, mitigating uncertainties.
"We wanted to ensure that we put more emphasis on the actual performance in playoffs and take a little bit away from the overspill from the regular season into your then playoffs performance," said Schmidt.
To address concerns about transparency, Championship Points distribution will be standardized across LEC placements. Teams finishing fifth and sixth, as well as seventh and eighth, will receive equal points, while the bottom two teams will not receive anything.
This adjustment seeks to level the playing field, ensuring equal rewards for teams with similar regular-season performances.
Further modifications include a tiebreaker for Championship Points in the Season Finals. If two teams have the same points heading into the tournament, the qualification will be granted to the team that earned the most points in the Summer Split.
Meanwhile, if the teams have an equal number of points from the Summer Split, the tiebreaker will be determined by their head-to-head record.
Changes in qualification
The LEC is also making adjustments to how teams qualify in the MSI and the League of Legends World Championship.
For MSI, the qualification process remains largely the same. The winners of the Winter and Spring Splits will earn the privilege of representing the EMEA region in the first international showdown of the year.
However, in case one team wins both splits, the LEC will pick the most consistent team across Winter and Spring as the second seed. Additional details on this process will be unveiled as the season draws closer.
Meanwhile, the qualification process for the 2024 World Championship is undergoing a significant transformation. The Summer Split Champion will secure an automatic invitation to the event.
"The team that wins Summer is going to attend Worlds no matter what," said Schmidt.
This adjustment ensures that the top three teams in the Summer Playoffs all have an opportunity to participate in Worlds, a departure from the previous reliance on Championship points for Season Finals qualification.