Image credit: Wojciech Wandzel for LoL Esports/Flickr
UK-based esports organisation Excel Esports qualified for the LEC Summer 2022 Playoffs tonight, their second LEC playoffs, after beating Vitality in a tie-breaker.
This means it’s the first time in Excel’s history they will have the chance to qualify for the League of Legends World Championship (LEC) through the Summer playoffs.
Excel had taken a very strong start to the LEC Summer 2022 Season, and for a good stint were hovering around the top of the table, but a long dip in form set in. That left this final Superweek to decide several of the top six teams in the LEC table, and who would be going to playoffs in Sweden.
Excel lost to Rogue but beat SK and Astralis this weekend, while Misfits picked up one win and two losses, and Fnatic took three straight wins. Vitality, however, took three straight losses.
This meant both Excel Esports and Team Vitality sat in joint sixth, with nine wins and nine losses each.
But it was Excel that beat Vitality in the tie-breaker to take fifth place.
Misfits beat Fnatic in the other tie-breaker tonight, meaning Misfits finish fourth and Fnatic fifth.
After Vitality were knocked out of playoffs contention, the LoL community took to Twitter to banter them for them apparently being billed as a ‘superteam’, with Vitality’s LEC roster being hyped up when it was announced in December 2021.
Elsewhere in the LEC Summer 2022, G2 topped the table, Mad Lions finished second and Rogue in third.
The news comes after Excel qualified for the LEC playoffs for the first time earlier this year at LEC Spring 2022, but they were knocked out by Vitality in the first round of playoffs. So tonight gave them revenge against Vitality.
LEC Summer 2022 standings and playoffs brackets
The final LEC Summer 2022 table is as follows:
Now it’s all to play for in Sweden, with the top two teams reaching Worlds 2022’s Main Event and third and fourth placed teams qualifying for the Worlds play-ins stage.
Will we finally see Excel Esports playing at Worlds on the global stage for the first time in their history? Time will tell. They will face Fnatic in the LEC playoffs.
The LEC Summer 2022 playoff finals will take place live in Sweden’s Malmö Arena from September 10th to 11th 2022.
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.
