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LCS: Why Eliminating the Spring Split Makes the League Stronger

By Josh Tyler

Los Angeles, California - February 8: --- during 2020 LCS Spring Split at the LCS Arena on February 8, 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
Los Angeles, California - February 8: --- during 2020 LCS Spring Split at the LCS Arena on February 8, 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games) /
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Broxah, Team Liquid, LCS, League of Legends.
League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games. /

The LCS is reportedly preparing to eliminate the Spring Split starting in 2021 and that might have some big benefits.

1. Roster Stability

As it currently stands, the period of time where there are the most roster changes among LCS teams after the season starts comes during the break between Spring and Summer Splits. Teams have finished their playoff runs and have a break before the Summer Split starts to re-evaluate their roster. In 2020, this was when Doublelift re-joined TSM (and they jettisoned Dardoch for Spica), Keith moved down to the Academy league to be replaced by huhi, and V1per left FlyQuest to join Dignitas (along with the free agent Dardoch).

While all these changes are exciting and make teams more competitive (see TSM who went from middling in spring to LCS champions in summer), it’s not ideal for the league. When teams see the middle of the year as an opportunity to fully reload/retool their rosters, it hurts roster cohesion for teams heading towards Worlds, as teams need to learn to play with their new teammates in a single split.

Now, however, there will not be that long, month-and-a-half break between the two splits because there will only be one season. Yes, most teams will get a break thanks to MSI, but based on how scheduling could work (more on that in a second), that break should be significantly shorter. Also, because the standings don’t get reset between the two splits, isn’t as appetizing a period to make large roster changes.

Instead, I believe we’ll see a lot more smaller roster changes during the season, especially early on in what used to be the Spring Split. With no meaningful playoffs and long break to look forward to, teams will likely be more aggressive in making roster changes early on in the year, tweaking rather than waiting for after the playoffs to do a full-scale re-evaluation.

This also means that teams should put more care into their Academy and Amateur rosters, as I believe we’ll mostly see players getting “called up” to the LCS than trades and free agent signings. Overall, this means that teams should have rosters which can change more frequently, but instead of casting off whole chunks of the roster at once it will likely be more iterative choices as players get shuffled around.

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