The League of Legends Champions Korea and its sister league, LCK Challengers League, introduces integrated rosters for the summer split. The new system allows for roster changes between the two leagues, much like the North American system in the League of Legends Championship Series. Integrated rosters will allow Korean teams to call up, or send down, players from their LCK and LCK Challengers roster biweekly. Teams can also use an emergency substitute if needed through this system.
2021 #LCK Summer Roster Announcement
Starting this Summer, the LCK and LCK Challengers League will operate an integrated roster system. Check out the summary of the changes below.
See each team's integrated roster 🔗https://t.co/U40NlO5a7A pic.twitter.com/KdttYrHi5P
— LCK (@LCK) June 1, 2021
The new integrated roster system
Integrated rosters will start for the LCK in the 2021 summer split. Teams will now have access to their LCK Challengers roster; they can pull players every two weeks. This is on top of the substitute players that teams already have on the starting roster. Additionally, this doubles the amount of players that each team can access for their starting rosters. According to the 2021 LCK summer competition rules, this practice will also extend to the coaching staff.
The LCK schedule has a two to three day break in between match weeks and call ups; send downs should occur during that timeframe. Teams can also switch players around before the LCK playoffs begin.
Teams are also allowed an emergency substitute from their LCK Challengers roster. If a starting player is unable to play due to an emergency, and the league secretary approves the transfer, teams can call up a player from Challengers. The player that is subbed out cannot return until the next two-week roster deadline.
Due to this new system, LCK’s regular season award criteria has been changed. Players will now need to participate in 80% of their team’s matches to be eligible for regular season MVP and all LCK teams. That’s a total of 29 matches played in the split for award consideration. The previous criteria was 50% of matches played.
The LCK returns with this new ruleset on June 9 with Fredit BRION taking on Liiv SANDBOX. T1 versus Hanwha Life Esports will take place thereafter.
