User:Richard Ye/League of Legends Champion Series

The League of Legends Champion Series (LCS) is a professional League of Legends electronic sports competition run by Riot Games, consisting of 8 teams from both North America and Europe. Each season consists of two splits in the spring and summer, where each team plays every other team 4 times in round-robin play. The summer split concludes with a play-off between the top 6 teams of each continent, with the top three teams from each continent winning a spot into the League of Legends World Championships.

The LCS represents the highest level of League of Legends play in Europe and North America. The LCS has a promotion and relegation system; the three bottom teams in the LCS from each split join the three top teams from the Challenger Series to compete for three spots in the next split of the LCS. The Challenger Series in each continent is composed of eight teams: the three teams which failed to advance in the previous promotion tournament and the top five teams from ranked ladder play in the respective public League of Legends server.

With the exception of some touring events, all games of the LCS are played live at Riot Games' studios in Los Angeles, United States and Cologne, Germany. In addition to a relatively small studio audience, all games are streamed live online, with broadcasts regularly attracting over 200,000 viewers.

The popularity and success of the LCS has attracted significant media attention. The competition gained legitimacy and was compared to more traditional sports after the US government granted athlete visas for LCS competitors. The LCS has also attracted major sponsorships from Coca-Cola and American Express.

History
Riot Games launched League of Legends in October 2009 and rapidly attracted attention from the competitive gaming community. The first two seasons of play consisted of a series of tournaments mostly organized by third parties, such as Major League Gaming in North America, and Intel Extreme Masters in Europe, capped by a world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games.

Riot Games announced the formation of the LCS on 6 August 2012, creating a fully-professional league with a regular schedule and guaranteed salaries for players. The first season of the LCS is therefore considered Season 3 of competitive League of Legends. The top three finishers in both the Riot Games North American and European regional championships held in August 2012 automatically qualified for the first spring split. The remaining five teams were decided in the qualifier tournaments held in January 2013. The first games of the first spring split took place on 9 February 2013 in Europe and on 7 February 2013 in North America.

The season 3 LCS finished with the summer playoffs, held on 30 August to 1 September 2013 in North America and 23 to 25 August in Europe. In North America, Cloud9 finished first, with Team SoloMid placing second and Team Vulcun placing third. In Europe, the top three finishers were Fnatic, Lemondogs and Gambit Gaming. The top three teams from each continent advanced to the Season 3 World Championships.

Riot Games changed naming conventions in 2014, calling the season the "2014 Season" instead of "Season 4". The Challenger Series was created for this season, creating a second tier of competition for promotion and relegation and a clear pathway for players to become professionals.

Format
8 teams from North America and 8 teams from Europe compete separately in the North American and European LCS. Each season is divided into two splits, with opportunities for promotion and relegation preceding each split. Regular play in each split consists of 11 weeks of play consisting of 8 games per week, with the exception of "superweeks" that host 16 games. Each team on each continent play each other team 4 times, for a total of 28 games played per team. Teams are ranked by win percentage, with ties allowed. For the purpose of seeding playoff positions, a tiebreaker is played to split a tie.

At the conclusion of a each split, a playoff is played to determine the final standings. The top 6 teams determined via regular season standings are eligible for the playoffs, with the top 2 teams receiving a bye into the semi-finals. Teams placing 3-6 play each other in quarter finals to determine who among them play the teams ranked 1 and 2 in the semi-finals. Each split's playoffs award cash prizes, and the top three finishing teams in the summer split from each continent receive entry into the World Championship.

The two teams that did not qualify for the playoffs and the team that placed 6th in the playoffs from each continent must compete in a promotion tournament which will determine the teams in the following split. These three teams compete against the top three teams from their respective Challenger Series, which is composed of the top three teams chosen via tournament from a pool of top ranked teams on the League of Legends public server in each continent. The 6th-placed team from the LCS gets the first pick of opponent from the Challenger Series, and the 7th-placed team gets to choose their opponent from the remaining two. This format is designed to have the strongest LCS team face the weakest Challenger team, and vice-versa. The tournament concludes with zero, one, two or three teams getting relegated or promoted, and thus can potentially result in a new split that is identical to the previous one.

Media Coverage
The LCS primarily reaches its viewers though its online streaming though its own channels on Twitch and Youtube. On Twitch alone, viewership numbers regularly exceed 200,000 for regular season play, and the games have drawn over 1.7 million unique visitors. However, Riot Games CEO Brandon Beck stated in 2012 that there were no immediate plans to try to bring the LCS to traditional TV, and news coverage of the regular season is generally limited to dedicated electronic sports news sites, such as CBS Interactive's onGamers.

The scale and popularity of the LCS itself, however, has attracted considerable media attention, particularly around some events that legitimized the LCS as a serious competition. In 2013, the awarding of athletic visas by the US government to LCS players was covered by multiple major outlets.

Europe
Source: League of Legends Champion Series