2015 Season - the Year of Ten Teams?

By Helmight


            In case you don’t happen to be on lolesports all the time like a particular blogger with no life is (ahem), you might not have seen the announcement made by Riot’s League Operations Manager, Nick Allen. It’s a doozy: “For 2015, we are exploring increasing the number of teams, from 8 to 10, in both the NA and EU LCS.”
            Sounds crazy, amiright? But the good kind of crazy, of course. According to Allen, the increase in LCS teams will allow for shortened splits and more exciting playoffs, as well as increasing player and team matchup diversity. Two additional teams competing in the League will force the current leaders to seriously consider their tactics and champion pools to counter the newcomers. It also means that we’re more likely to see some more unknown teams entering the ring. While I do love watching TSM and CLG beat the crap out of each other, I also always love watching the new teams as they struggle to make it in the professional scene or dominate their competition.
            Allen also mentioned that the addition of more teams would probably result in the end of Super Weeks. This is kind of a bad thing, since I won’t have an excuse to sit around watching games all day for a week, but is great for the players and schedulers. Currently, Super Week is immensely exhausting for LCS players – having four games spread out over three days forces them to put in an immense amount of prep work. That’s not to mention the actual game days being long and tiring for everyone involved, player, coaches, shoutcasters, and journalists too. With ten teams, it’s easier to get everyone to play each an equal amount during the season without the need for these marathons. Kinda sucks for the audience, but hey, it’s a small price to pay.
            Of course, keep in mind that none of this is confirmed yet. It could be that ten teams is just too many for the LCS and we’ll stick with eight. However, I’m hoping that Riot goes ahead and makes this change. Having new blood in the LCS is almost always a good thing since it forces people to make radical innovations to the way the game is played. It also makes the scene more diverse – with more people playing the same champions and roles, different strategies and picks will be necessary to stand out amongst the crowd. With luck, we’ll see ten teams showing up to play for next year’s Spring Split.

What do you think about the proposed changes? Let us know below!