Riot Korea plans to produce a reality TV-style show that will pit some of the best amateur League of Legends players in the region against each other for a chance to win a potentially career-launching prize, the company announced today.
The show is named LoL THE NEXT and is based on the many popular K-pop reality shows that showcase upcoming talent during the competitive environment that is the audition process.
From a list of 100 Diamond-ranked or above players, the show will put each player through a rigorous audition process that will eliminate people at regular intervals until just 10 competitors remain.
These final 10 players will be split into two seperate teams and then mentored by four legenadary Korean pros. One team will be coached by the pair of Wolf and PawN, while the second squad will be coached by PraY and MaRin.
The four LCK legends who will be participating as mentors will be supporting the participants for the missions throughout the program. Wolf will join hands with PawN to form one team, and PraY will be forming another team with MaRin. The LCK legends will be scouting and evaluating the participants to lead their team to victory.
The applying conditions for participation was “at least Diamond 1” in the KR server. While the period for the application was only for 11 days, nearly 1,000 players applied. After selecting 100 players for an interview, 40 participants made it to the program. The participants have gone through various missions to join the teams, and the legends will be evaluating the participants to finally leave five members per team.
LoL THE NEXT will consist of seven episodes. The first six episodes will be about selecting the final five members for each team. The last episode will be a live match where the ten players will have the final match against each other at LoL Park, the stage of their dreams. 50,000,000 KRW (≒42,000 USD) will be awarded to the winning team with a special prize that hasn’t been revealed yet.
A final showdown will then take place between these two teams at LoL Park, the ancestral home of the LCK. For the victorious team, the final five players will be given a “special opportunity,” as well as a share of 50 million KRW (roughly $41,770).
The show’s first broadcast was on Aug. 2 at 1:30am CT. It’ll be streamed on the LCK’s official YouTube and Twitch channels going forward. Tune in to see who will be the next LoL superstar.
