Riot Games has announced the format for the League of Legends Champion Series (LCS) will be massively changed in 2020. This year will feature more broadcasting days and a complete restructure of World Championship qualification and seasonal playoffs.
The new broadcasting schedule for American League of Legends
The newest season of the LCS begins Jan. 25, with the Academy League kicking off one day earlier, Jan. 24. With the new season, however, come some massive changes to how the league is broadcast to the viewers at home. A major focus is to include the Academy scene much more into mainstream viewership. One way the Lolesports team aims to accomplish this is by broadcasting an academy game following both weekend LCS broadcasts. In addition, three Academy games will be aired on Monday, before the final 2 LCS games of the week are played.
To make the Academy scene easier to follow, the Lolesports team also introduced a new broadcast on Friday. This new show, “Academy Rush”, features shoutcasters and analysts of the LCS breaking down 4 Academy games played beforehand. In addition to this, one more game will be broadcast in full after this show. All of this programming is an attempt to further entice viewers to become more interested in the Academy scene.
The new playoffs format for the LCS
The other major change surrounds playoffs formats for the LCS. This year, both the LCS 2020 Spring and Summer Playoffs will be played out in a double-elimination format. The Spring Playoffs are set to follow a standard top 6-team single elimination structure, as seen in the image above.
The LCS 2020 Summer Playoffs, however, will have a more complex system. This is because the Summer Playoffs will now decide which North American teams will earn the three Worlds spots the region has available. The image provided by Lolesports below should give you a good idea of what it may look like in the second half of 2020. The important difference with this system and the previous iteration is that the Spring split is now even less important in comparison. One upside of this is that we could see a trend develop where teams are able to take bigger risks in the Spring season, to prepare for the upcoming Worlds-qualifying half of the year.
For more news surrounding League of Legends, be sure to read all about the first patch of the year and the new champion, Sett!
