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Some League of Legends esports fans have complained about yesterday’s 2024 Worlds draw for the Round 2 Swiss stage matches.
This came after day one of the swiss stage. There was an unexpected mishap, with some of the team labels not inside the balls drawn.
Specifically, in the first 1-0 draw of winning teams, BLG were drawn against an empty ball. LNG were the only team left to be drawn, so BLG will face LNG in the day two matches today.
However, some fans called into question the integrity of the draw, asking what would’ve happened if the empty ball was drawn earlier, and arguing that it would’ve been lighter, and the whole 1-0 draw should’ve been redone.
Then, in the second draw of losing teams, aka the 0-1 draw, GAM Esports were drawn against an empty ball. This prompted Riot to completely redo the second draw.
The person drawing the balls (Malu Malheiros, Competitive Operations Lead, LEC) and stage host Laure Valée dealt with the situation well, with Malu responding to the situation with a meme:
In addition to all of this, Mad Lions Koi and PSG Talon will face off again following their match in the Play-In qualifiers.
Typically when there is an issue with the draw, tournament organisers would void the initial draw and restart the entire process. Despite this, Riot Games has opted to stick with the final draw from the live broadcast, which became a talking point with the community.
Nevertheless, Riot has made its decision, and it would be too late to sort a redraw now, with teams set to play matches today from 2pm CEST.
Esports News UK has contacted Riot Games for comment and will update this article should we hear back.
Community reacts to 2024 Worlds draw controversy
Odoamne said his draw would’ve been better, Caedrel lost his mind, and fans also took to Reddit to discuss the Worlds 2024 Swiss round two draw.
“BLG vs. Nothing in the Ball should be a banger,” said TheAlmightyVox3.
FuriousKale added: “Even the balls had layoffs.”
“Pretty disgraceful and embarrassing by the production team to not make sure that the balls have the team names in them,” commented Old__Millennial.
“That was not okay, the only reason you won’t redraw pool 1 was because you got lucky that LNG was the last ball. Very unprofessional,” said pSovS.
