After an exhilarating weekend of League of Legends action in Madrid in front of a passionate Spanish crowd, many pro players and personalities in the esports scene are now asking for the LEC to be permanently relocated away from Berlin, Germany.
The LEC Roadtrip, hosted by Movistar KOI, saw thousands of fans flood to the Madrid Arena to watch games between the hosts, G2 Esports, Fnatic, and GIANTX. With the huge crowd, these regular season matches immediately felt more important and exciting.
British streaming superstar Caedrel, owner of NLC and EMEA Masters champions Los Ratones, reiterated this on his X (formerly Twitter) account: “Arenas bring so much magic to competitive play. (It) feels absolutely electric and the league already feels like it’s elevated to a whole new level of entertainment and competition.”
The packed-out arena felt like a far cry from the small studio in Berlin, which only holds a few hundred people and rarely creates much atmosphere, much to the chagrin of many regular viewers. The LEC shares this same studio with Valorant’s VCT EMEA, which has been plagued with tech issues in recent weeks. Berlin has also become infamous within the community for having substantial internet issues, which caused major problems when Covid-19 forced the league to be online.
As a result, multiple LoL pros and coaches took to social media to lobby for the LEC to move out of the German city and into sunny Spain.
MKOI’s Canadian midlaner Joseph Joon “Jojopyun” Pyun’s tweet: “BRING LEC TO SPAIN PLEASE @LEC” has amassed almost 10,000 likes at the time of writing, less than 24 hours after it was posted. Many others shared that same sentiment with former pro Erberk “Gilius” Demir tweeting: “Gift the Berlin studio to Valorant. Make LEC be played in Spain permanent!!” LEC play-by-play commentator Jake “Hysterics” Osypenko had the same idea, suggesting: “Yo Valorant I think you guys keep the Berlin Studio and we just perma roadshow, deal????”
GIANTX coach André “Guilhoto” Pereira Guilhoto’s translated tweet reads: “Spain is magical. What a two-out-of-three finish today. Bring the LEC here, for God’s sake.” And many of his colleagues agreed. His toplaner Eren “Lot” Yıldız posted: “LEC in Spain pls” with a prayer emoji, support Yoon “Jun” Se-jun asked: “Can I keep play in Spain?” and in a brief interview posted by GIANTX, coach Emanuel “Emi” Ursachi admitted he wasn’t looking forward to returning to Berlin while midlaner Adam “Jackies” Jeřábek said: “I would stay in Madrid if I could.”
Former GIANTX CEO Tim Reichert, who oversaw the team’s merger with British organisation Excel Esports, also expressed his thoughts on the LEC’s need for relocation: “I’m curious to see if Riot will eventually realize that the studio was the wrong vision. Instead of stubbornly sticking to it, they should fix the mistake by hosting some matchdays online and holding the finals plus 2-3 roadshows in large and mid-sized arenas.
“The product would be vastly improved, and it would be a huge relief for the teams. The problem isn’t the franchise system, but the studio and the obligation to be in Berlin.”
However, relocation wouldn’t be easy as it sounds according to LEC referee “Katsaurus” who gave a lengthy response to Reichert’s idea. Among her many reasons, she cited the struggles to uphold competitive integrity for online games and how heavily players disliked playing online during the pandemic. She also stresses what a huge undertaking it is to host such large-scale broadcasts and how the small studio, usually, allows for any tech or production issues to be resolved quickly.
Despite all this, she also expressed her desire for the LEC to move: “This isn’t to say I don’t want LEC to move to another country. Anywhere is better than Berlin (imagine France/Spain with their huge fanbases, beautiful weather, architecture, cuisine, and probably better internet, hello?)”
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
