Is it Time for a Ten Team LCS?

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos 

Remember earlier in the year when the possibility of a ten team LCS was hinted at by Riot? I’ve been giving it some more thought now that the regular season is over, and there are a lot of pros and cons to the idea. Based on my own perspective of the scene and what I feel it needs to grow and prosper, I'd like to talk about some aspects I think are important, and examine what it might be like if the LCS were to make this change. 

The first thing I’d like to highlight is that with the current structure, a team that finishes in third place in the regular season standings can find themselves on the receiving end of an unfortunate playoffs run and suddenly end up in the promotion tournament fighting to save their jobs. I personally believe that this is a huge kick in the shins for a team that fought hard for an entire split to reach top three, only to rejected back to the bottom because of two lackluster performances. I saw a lot of talk during the EU LCS's Supa Hot Crew vs Roccat game on how Supa Hot Crew “don’t deserve to be third seed if they lose to the sixth seed," but I believe this to be false. Their position as third seed was decided by a long split of hard work, trials and tribulations, and the possibility of having done all that work and having it overturned by two bad results can be both mentally crippling and simply unfair. This is currently the situation that Millenium faces as they prepare for the promotion tournament off the back of a very hard slide from being a team hell bent on Worlds. 

The LCS in its current format is just too unforgiving. End of split playoffs should be all about pushing forwards to try and grab a spot at Worlds after having a good enough season to qualify, but for the teams who qualify third through sixth, it starts off being about securing your place in the LCS. It doesn't make sense in my mind that the same teams that could go to Worlds could suddenly become teams that lose their jobs within the same tournament. With a ten team LCS, playoffs could still be between the teams in the first to sixth spot, however the tournament could be entirely about progression towards Worlds rather than the double pressure of dropping out the LCS, which could instead be the fate of the teams that simply finish eighth, ninth and tenth, with seventh remaining in the LCS but not in the playoffs bracket. Not only will this ease pressure off the players, but it will make the LCS more stable as a competitive league and less about peaking at the right time. The regular season standings will actually serve more of a purpose in deciding the fates of the teams, which is what it's meant to do in the first place.

On top of changing playoffs and on the topic of making the regular season actually matter, having ten teams in the LCS would also see the end of Super Weeks and bring about a fluid regular season schedule which I believe is more than needed for the LCS players, as well as the staff and the spectators. Super Weeks heavily promote tilting and peaking performances which can greatly affect the standings. Fnatic spent six weeks in fourth place during the Summer Split, and then Week Seven Super Week comes along and suddenly they go 4-0 and remain in second for the rest of the split. The fact that twelve games of the twenty eight are Super Week games can greatly swing the season in your favour or against you if you’re a tilting team or happen to run across unforeseen trouble. Spectator-wise, they’re also very time consuming and taxing on most weekly schedules: six days of consecutive matches following the four from last week provide ten days of LCS streaming with only one day of break in between. It’s just too much in a short amount of time; a normal regular season would be fluid, more consistent and more enjoyable for both players and spectators of the LCS. It would also allow for unavoidable happenings to be less punishing (like Visa issues for a particular player or a sudden loss in confidence for one week.)

One other aspect of the LoL pro scene that will be affected by the change to ten teams is the challenger scene. There is an argument that the challenger scene will greatly diminish in quality if there is space for two more teams in the LCS. The top challengers will have a gateway into the LCS, meaning that the scene in challenger will be less competitive. While this is a fair point, the challenger scene is also a very large pool that could generate great up and coming players at any point and while it will initially become “easier” in a sense due to there being two less top tier teams, other teams will rise to the occasion and take their space at the top. It also makes the challenger scene more attractive as there is more of a chance to actually requalify as many teams that remain in the challenger scene at this current time tend to become unstable and see many roster changes in an attempt to find something that can make it in. A good example of this is Ninjas In Pyjamas, who have yet to find a roster that can make it back into the LCS despite numerous switches and rotations of top level players - at every point having a squad that “should be in the LCS.” The addition of two extra LCS spaces would allow teams like NiP who are stuck in limbo at the top of challenger to have more of a chance to make it in, which in turn also allows for other teams to rise to the top of challenger. We will see more underdogs and rising talent as well as more organisations getting involved in sponsoring teams, which could be beneficial to both the players and the challenger scene in a whole. Teams that “should be in the LCS” will more than likely make it while teams that aren’t quite ready will have more of a chance to improve and grow.

Overall, I believe the switch to ten teams will be a great change to the LCS and I hope it goes through in time for the Season Five Spring Split. The positive effects that the switch will have are more than worth the change and will be a big step towards making the LCS and LoL Esports a better experience for everyone involved.