The League of Legends World Championship – Worlds – starts today in the group phase. What chances do the Europeans have? Can ‘Faker’ win another title? A month of battles.
The World Championships begin! Today, 7 October, is the day: the League of Legends World Championship kicks off its group stage. Although “Worlds” technically already began last week with the play-ins, as of today the teams that actually qualified for the World Championship are now competing against each other.
Worlds is one of the biggest eSports events of the year and there is a total of over 2.2 million US dollars in the prize pool. The world champion will take home just under 450,000 dollars.
Group stage at Madison Square Garden
For one month, developer Riot Games will let the world champion play out. The format remains as known: A group stage is followed by the knockout round starting with the quarter-finals. There are four groups in total, which have been set up in such a way that the first and second-placed players in each region do not have to play against each other.
The matches will be played over two weekends at the Hulu Theatre in Madison Square Garden in New York. A total of three teams are participating for the European LEC. Rouge as champion and G2 Esports as runner-up have booked their tickets directly.
Last week, Fnatic fought their way to a first respectable success in the play-ins: With 4-1 after games, they finished first in their group and can go into the next phase with a broad chest. The fourth European team was eliminated by a relatively narrow margin: MAD Lions. The team fought their way through to the last match against the American Evil Geniuses.
In a worthwhile first match of a best-of-five format, both teams won again and again. In the end, however, the Europeans were clearly defeated by the playfulness and foresight of the Americans and were ultimately eliminated by a clear score of 0:3 after games.
It will be difficult for the Europeans
But with all the local patriotism, it must also be clear: While the Europeans are not represented in large numbers in the group stage of the Worlds without reason and are currently considered one of the strongest regions in the world. Against the Chinese and Korean teams, however, they will only have an outsider’s chance. The teams played too fast and too superior in the play-ins. And there, the Europeans only got to see the lower-ranked teams of the leagues.
Starting tonight, the really big calibres are waiting: T1 around superstar Sang-hyeok ‘Faker’ Lee, Gen.G and the Chinese from JDG, TOP and EDG make it difficult to qualify for the two places in each group. Rouge and G2 have got a relatively good draw and could snip an Asian team. For that, however, an outstanding performance is needed. On the other hand, when should they do so if not at the World Championships?
As the group stage will be played at Madison Square Garden, the matches will take place during the European night. The competition days will start around 11pm German time and last until 4am. Riot seems to be making an effort to adjust the schedule and put the first European matches into the early night.
To kick things off, there’s Fnatic against Cloud9 today accordingly, after which it’s G2’s turn to play Korean league third-placed DWG. As always, tournament organiser Riot has compiled all the information and match replays on LoLesports.
