English-speaking esports casters based in China to cover the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) will be flying home, following concerns around the coronavirus.
Casters including Joe ‘Munchables’ Fenny, Oisín ‘Penguin’ Molloy, Robert ‘Dagda’ Price and Jake ‘Hysterics’ Osypenko will be leaving. Another caster on the team, Clement Chu, is already away from China as he is currently in Taipei.
The team said they will be leaving over the next couple of days and hope to be back soon once the situation has improved.
Experienced British caster Munchables posted the following update video on his Twitter account earlier today:
“In case you don’t know, there’s a virus going around called the coronavirus,” Munchables said.
“We don’t really know the extent of how dangerous [the coronavirus] is, but it seems like it could be a lot worse than people are saying, so we’re getting the fuck outta here!”
Munchables
The news comes after LPL announced it was delaying the Chinese League of Legends tournament due to the coronavirus outbreak, until it can ‘ensure the safety and health’ of its players and fans.
The LPL consists of China’s best League of Legends teams, including Invictus Gaming, Edward Gaming, Royal Never Give Up, current world champions FunPlus Phoenix and more.
More than 2,700 people are reported to have been infected by the coronavirus and around 80 have passed away due to it.
China has put in place travel restrictions and is currently building a 1,000-bed hospital to specifically treat patients that have contracted the virus.
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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.
