Today, LVP UK announced some changes to the UK League Championship (UKLC) League of Legends esports competition, while Fnatic Rising were knocked out of the EU Masters.
UKLC changes
It is removing the UKLC tower format, which was introduced earlier this year and saw teams attempt to scale the UKLC tower by going head-to-head in a best-of-one ‘king of the hill’ style knockout tournament each week. The team that climbed the highest got to face the previous week’s tower champion for bragging rights and a bunch of championship points.
Now it’s switching to a double round robin tournament, with 8 teams instead of 9 as of spring 2020. This means one team will qualify for the UKLC from the upcoming promotion tournament, instead of the usual two.
LVP said that teams have been made aware of this change well before the announcement was made.
LVP said on the UKLC website: “Whilst we’re happy the [tower] format provided a unique and entertaining angle for the league, ultimately we believe that the benefits were outweighed by the cons.
“In particular, the reliance on a bracket draw and the differing number of games that teams played throughout the season meant that teams suffered from an uneven playing field. Though we took steps to mitigate this, community feedback has largely remained in favour of a more traditional format.
“Whilst we’re happy the tower format provided a unique and entertaining angle for the league, ultimately we believe that the benefits were outweighed by the cons.”
LVP UK
“As such, we’ve decided to retire the tower in favour of what fans know and love: a classic double round robin tournament that feeds into Playoffs.”
Finally, LVP announced some changes to the competitive calendar for 2020. The UKLC spring split will run from January to March, the online qualifier and promotion tournament will run in February to March, while the summer split will take place from June to August.
The next online qualifier and promotion tournament will run from June to July. The Forge of Champions will now take place in October and November 2020 as a standalone cup competition.
In 2020, due to the format changes, the competitive calendar is also shaking up. The TL;DR is that the Promotion Tournament is being separated from Forge of Champions, and will run parallel to the UKLC regular split. Forge will only run once in the year, as a standalone cup competition.
LVP said there will be ‘a greater focus on emerging and fringe talent in the UK and Ireland’ for Forge of Champions, and that concrete details will be announced at a later date.
Fnatic knocked out of EU Masters
Speaking of the UKLC, current champions Fnatic Rising sadly crashed out of the European EU Masters tournament today (September 28th), losing to Giants Gaming 3-0 in the semi-final.
History has repeated itself, as Fnatic Rising also exited the spring EU Masters earlier this year in the semi-final too.
Mid-laner MagiFelix told Sky Sports’ Yinsu Collins after the loss: “Both me and our team are feeling pretty down right now. We came into the tournament expecting to go far so we’re sad that we couldn’t.
“We didn’t play like we usually do in offline competitions. We’re normally a lot more cohesive in our plays and know what we want to do in the game but I felt like today we weren’t really playing as a unit.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
