Riot shifting the NA LCS model from ‘European football’ to ‘American football’

Starting in 2018, Riot’s North American League Championship Series will be more like the NFL than the Premier League in determining how and which teams contend.

Riot announced on Thursday that going forward, promotion and relegation of entire teams will no longer be a big part of the NA LCS. Instead, there will be a more consistent roster of teams, with a $10 million buy-in.

This announcement comes as the NA LCS looks to appeal to an even broader North American fan base. Fans in Canada, Mexico and the United States are used to competitive leagues with a consistent roster of teams. In traditional sports leagues like MLB, the NBA and the NHL, there is no system for promotion and relegation of teams in lower leagues. In kind, the tournaments that once determined which teams would participate in each split of the NA LCS are now a thing of the past.

The result is a more fixed 10-team league, allowing fans to identify with a particular franchise over a longer period of time. Paying the $10 million isn’t a guarantee that the team will have a spot in perpetuity, however. The promotion and relegation system that fans of European football are familiar with isn’t going away entirely.

The league’s new format will reward teams which place highly in the standings consistently not only with keeping their spots in the NA LCS, but also financially. Teams which finish last or next-to-last in the standings at least five times over an eight-split period would be at risk of losing their spots to other teams with the sponsorship and proven talent to take their places.

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For fans wondering about the Challenger series, it’s sticking around, but with a different purpose. It will take the shape of the NBA D-League, with teams who have secured franchises in the NA LCS sending players they have signed to compete in training for eventual promotion to the NA LCS roster. In this way, promotion and relegation is much more realistic for individual gamers than entire teams.

While Riot stands to benefit from these changes, the players and teams do as well. Teams will receive a share of the overall split revenue, and the minimum salary for individual team members has gone up to $75,000.

These are perhaps just the first of several changes that could be coming over the next few years to the NA LCS. Riot has initiated the creation of a players association, akin to the unions which exist in most major professional sports. It could be only a short time until we see the first NA LCS collective bargaining agreement between Riot, the teams and the new union.

These changes obviously make having tremendous financial resources at a team’s disposal essential to being part of the NA LCS, but that was already the case anyway. The practical result is that only the top tier of organizations with the ability to not only perform well on Summoner’s Rift but also market themselves and procure sponsorships will be part of the NA LCS.

Interested teams have from now until July 14 to apply for a franchise, and if accepted, be a long-term part of the most fan-centric NA LCS product to date.