League of Legends: Riot was Right to Postpone the 2020 MSI Tournament

Hanoi, Vietnam – May 10: — during the 2019 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational Group Stage at the National Convention Center on May 10, 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Photo by David Lee/Riot Games) /

League of Legends’ professional tournament, the Mid-Season Invitational will see changes in 2020.

The League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational (“MSI”) is an international event that takes place between the Spring and Summer Splits of every region, featuring each region’s spring champions going head-to-head. This year the event will be slightly different.

The format will stay the same and the number of teams will also not change. The tournament will however take place at a later date. The new date for the tournament is July 3rd-19th, 2020.

This change is a result of precautions taken as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak, which has also affected the LCK and LPL schedules. Also taking effect is due to this change is the canceling of the Rift Rivals series of tournaments. The changes are interesting, to say the least.

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I do applaud the efforts to keep players safe and in exercising caution related to the virus. I also think that, with the reduced schedule of the Korean and Chinese leagues, it might not be fair to have them go head to head with western teams that have had full splits to prepare and get into top form for this event.

I do also feel like it was a positive to try to save MSI, as it is one of only two major international events people want to watch showcasing head-to-head battles between regions. In 2019 MSI had a peak viewership of almost 740,000, which is about double what the LCS is getting in viewers during the 2020 Spring Split.

MSI will get views, which will bring sponsorship money which is good for the growth of League of Legends as an esport. Canceling this event would cost viewers and money that would most certainly come in handy for sustaining the growth of the professional League of Legends.

However, this change in date comes at a cost. The Summer Splits are being moved up to earlier dates and MSI will take place in the middle of the Summer Split. This is a terrible idea.

It seemed like a lot of people had issues with Rift Rivals, a mostly for fun tournament taking place in the middle of the Summer Split and messing up the schedule. But suddenly we’re fine with going on a two-week, as opposed to a three-day-long break in the middle of the split to hold this tournament? Sure the other teams in the league not attending MSI get a nice break, but it might be too much of an interrupt for the normal routine and may do more harm than good.

Plus Summer Split is all about getting to Worlds. MSI is a nice event, but it’s not as important as making Worlds.

A lot of teams will thus probably shift their focus to Worlds qualifying, not caring how they perform at MSI. It just feels like MSI will be past its expiration date by then and teams won’t be focusing on it as much as they will their domestic Summer Split.

Though having it later might serve as better preparation for worlds. Teams will get a chance to play against other regions closer to the Worlds event. This gives them a more recent idea of how teams play and what the meta could be, as opposed to relaying on older data from the Spring Split to scout teams.

The canceling of Rift Rivals I think isn’t a bad move either. Sure from a fan perspective, it’s fun to see more match-ups between other regions and rooting for NA to beat EU is quite enjoyable. But even with the lighthearted approach and for fun mentality it just seems like an afterthought of an event.

Even the viewer numbers agree as the 2019 LCS-LEC Rift Rivals had lower peak viewers and fewer hours watched than the 2020 LCS Spring Split does. So keeping the Rift Rivals over MSI would have lost a lot of viewer numbers and won’t have been worth it.

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Overall I can see why they made the changes and they are pretty good. I think that preserving MSI and keeping it competitive are a plus, even at the expense of a minor event like Rift Rivals.

For more information about COVID-19, visit the CDC’s website or the website for your state’s Department of Health.

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