Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games Flickr
British esports host, journalist and Valorant personality Yinsu Collins will make her League of Legends official broadcast debut at the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) 2022.
She will be working as an interviewer and on other parts of the English broadcast for some of MSI, which kicks off on May 10th 2022 in Busan, South Korea, and features 11 top League of Legends teams from around the world.
Yinsu started out in esports as a journalist, and over the past year or so has become a well-known face in Valorant. She’s hosted several esports events for Riot Games, including in the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT), Valorant Game Changers and more.
Now she’s a part of the MSI 2022 broadcast talent line-up, which was announced today. Technically, this isn’t Yinsu’s actual League debut, since she has worked at the collegiate level in the past on the British Esports Student Champs, but this is the first major official Riot LoL broadcast she’ll be a part of.
Yinsu joins others on the broadcast talent team including Quickshot, Drakos, Atlus, Chronicler and more. Other UK and Ireland talent include Medic, Vedius, Aux and Oisin.
The news comes after several esports talent announced they would not be a part of MSI 2022. This includes British caster and Excel Esports content creator, Caedrel, who said he is ‘dealing with some personal issues at the moment and is not in the right headspace’.
Long-time League of Legends host Sjokz has opted to work at the PGL CSGO Major in Antwerp over MSI this year.
And Captain Flowers, while he won’t be as part of the casting team, will be involved in another way.
Captain Flowers on Twitter: “The English casting team for MSI will be at the LEC studio in Berlin. The event itself will be in Korea. For me, that means all the difficulties of long travel and all the troubles of remote shows all at once. So, after a lot of consideration, I’ve declined to cast MSI this year.
“I won’t be completely detached from the event. I’ll be co-hosting a three-episode mini-series on all things MSI with Perkz and Ovilee May while still here in LA, so keep your eyes open for that.”
Last year’s MSI broadcast line-up included the likes of Sjokz, Caedrel, Chronicler, Vedius, Medic, Phreak, Captain Flowers and lots more. The event was won by China’s Royal Never Give Up.
MSI 2022 key info: Schedule, teams, dates, streams and more
Held between the first and second splits of the season, the best team from the regional leagues compete for the title. MSI is a time for regions to showcase their talents and acts as the biggest multi-region tournament after the World Championship, which takes place later in the year.
MSI 2022 will take place in Busan, South Korea, in two venues: the Busan Esports Arena (Groups) and the Bexco Exhibition Hall (Rumble and Knockouts). The English language analyst desk will be fully in-person and produced from the LEC studio in Berlin, Germany.
Riot Games supervises regional leagues in North America, Europe, Latin America, Brazil, Oceania, Korea, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. The event moves between host regions each year, and for 2022, teams will compete in Busan, South Korea.
This year’s creative theme is ‘Take Notes’, which Riot says is ‘a confident, attitude-infused call to action that highlights the epic moves and original style of MSI’s greatest pros. It continues to build out MSI as the bolder, grittier battleground of LoL esports’.
In terms of the dates and format of MSI 2022, the event has three stages:
- The Group Stage, May 10th to 15th 2022
- The Rumble Stage, May 20th to 24th 2022
- The Knockout Stage, May 27th to 29th 2022
GROUPS: Teams have been drawn into two groups of four and one group of three to play a best-of-one double round robin within their respective group. The group of three will play a quadruple round robin.
RUMBLE: The top two teams from each of the three groups will advance to the Rumble Stage, where all six teams will play a best-of-one double round robin.
KNOCKOUTS: The final four teams standing will compete in the Knockout Stage utilising a best-of-five single elimination format. The two remaining teams will compete on May 29th for the MSI Championship title.
The teams competing at MSI 2022, and their groups, are as follows:
- CHINA – LPL: Royal Never Give Up (RNG)
- KOREA – LCK: T1 (T1)
- EUROPE – LEC: G2 Esports (G2)
- NORTH AMERICA – LCS: Evil Geniuses (EG)
- SOUTHEAST ASIA – PCS: PSG.Talon Esports (PSG)
- BRAZIL – CBLOL: RED Canids Kalunga (RED)
- JAPAN – LJL: DetonatioN FocusMe (DFM)
- LATIN AMERICA – LLA: Team Aze (AZE)
- OCEANIA – LCO: ORDER (ORD)
- TURKEY – TCL: fastPay Wildcats (IW)
- VIETNAM – VCS: Saigon Buffalo Esports (SGB)*
Tickets for MSI 2022 can be bought here and matches can also be watched online at lolesports.com.
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.
