Just days before the start of the League of Legends European Championship 2022 spring split, the league announced that teams will be kicking off the new year remotely. All 10 teams will play their matches as scheduled, but they will be from their own training facilities, rather than the LEC Studio in Berlin, Germany.
The LEC 2022 spring split was highly anticipated, with many revamped rosters. Team Vitality developed a super team with the return of EU legends Luka “Perkz” Perković and Barney “Alphari” Morris. Fan-favorite teams like Fnatic and G2 Esports are bringing in new-look rosters as well.
Important update about the #LEC pic.twitter.com/yWgTKRDOcG
— LEC (@LEC) January 6, 2022
The announcement comes in the wake of the increase in COVID-19 cases across the world due to the Omicron variant. According to the John Hopkins Center of Systems Science and Engineering — which tracks data of COVID-19 transmission across the world — Germany, like the rest of the world, has seen a huge uptick in cases. On Jan. 5 alone, Germany reported 67,337 new cases, according to John Hopkins University. In July of 2021, the number of new cases was under 1,000 a day.
In the official statement, the league said that their No. 1 priority is always “the health and wellbeing of the players, coaches, team personnel and our staff.” The league went on to say that they will continue to monitor the situation on a weekly basis. Their goal is to get the teams together as soon as it’s safe to do so. This means that there is currently no set-in-stone timeline to bring the teams to Berlin.
In the summer of 2021, when the Delta variant was at its peak, the teams started the 2021 LEC summer split remotely. But in Week 5.
The 2022 LEC spring split kicks off Friday, Jan. 14.
