A new decade comes with a new format.
The goal of the new format is to make the regular season more impactful for World Championship seeding.
While the Regular Season will keep the double-round-robin, best-of-1 format, the LEC Playoff format will be new. As every series before, the play-off matches will be a best-of-5. There will be three weeks of playoffs according to the schedule below:
WEEK ONE
Match 1: the 1st seeded team gets to pick their opponent between the 3rd and 4th seeded teams
Match 2: the 2nd seeded team plays the 3rd or 4th seeded team, which was not chosen on Match 1
Match 3: Teams seeded 5 and 6 collide
WEEK TWO
Match 4: The lowest seed team losing in Matches 1 & 2 plays the winner of Match 3
Match 5: The winners of Match 1 and 2 face each other in the winner’s bracket
Match 6: The winner of Match 4 plays the highest seed losing in Matches 1 & 2
WEEK THREE
Match 7: The winner of Match 6 plays the loser of Match 5
Match 8: The emerging victor of Match 7 progresses to the grand final to compete against the only remaining undefeated team from the winners’ bracket, with everything on the line.
The way Championship Points will be awarded tweaked as well. “Our goal was to ensure that Spring means more than just who will qualify to MSI, while still structuring our format in a way that sends the best European teams to Worlds,” said Riot Games in the communication.
In Spring, teams will still earn Championship Points based on their performance in the Play-offs – just like in 2019. The distribution of points will be as follows:
#1 = 90, #2 = 70, #3 = 50, #4 = 30, #5 = 20, #6 = 10
For Summer, however, Championship Points will only be awarded for performance in the Regular Season. These points will then be used to seed the top 6 teams of the Regular Season into the Summer Play-offs. Points will be awarded for Summer Regular Season as follows:
#1 = 140, #2 = 100, #3 = 70, #4 = 50, #5 = 30, #6 = 20
This means that Championship Points will not be used as a way for teams to qualify for Worlds. All of the European slots at the World Championships in 2020 will be determined only by performance in the Summer Play-Offs, with Championship Points determining how easy (or how hard) of a path to Worlds each team will have.
The Regional Qualifier, which took place each year will no longer be used for the 3rd seed. If a team plays badly in Spring, it can still come back for Summer and be able to obtain a spot for the World Championship, but if it plays right in Spring and fails in Summer, then the chances are very slim with the new format.
