In a press conference held today, LCS owners answered the question: what impact does the move of Worlds to Europe have on their orgs?
While the LCS Championship is still ongoing to determine the finishing and seeding order, we have North America's top 3 teams and Worlds representatives. Team Liquid, Cloud9, and 100 Thieves will be representing NA internationally. Along with this, it was leaked and then announced that Worlds 2021 would be moving from the planned location in China to Europe.
Ahead of the lower bracket final of the LCS Championship, a press conference was held with owners and managers of each of North America's top 3. Esports.gg posed a question: What impact does the move of the Worlds location have on the orgs? 100 Thieves' Matthew "Nadeshot" Haag, Cloud9's Jack Etienne, and Team Liquid's Kang "Dodo" Jun-hyeok all provided answers. See what they had to say below.
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Esports.gg: From your ownership point of view, Worlds was moved from China to Europe somewhat suddenly this year. Does that have any impact on the organization that maybe the regular fan doesn’t see, from a financial or a planning perspective?
Nadeshot: I can jump in here first. To be honest with you, it makes things a little easier. I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to talk about this, but I guess nobody’s gonna tell me differently. It’s funny because a lot of things with China, or heading over there, I think there were gonna be some issues with visas. There were possibly decisions that we’d have to make where players might not be able to make it back into the US for another couple of months following Worlds. Look, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t understand international visas and travel, so I’m not even gonna speak on that in any way. But I think it actually makes things a little bit easier, so, it’s pretty simple. I’m excited to go to Europe, and I think the team is probably a little bit happier that it’s ended up in that region.
Dodo: Yeah, for us too, it definitely made things a lot easier. With experiencing China at Worlds last year, I know there was a lot of difficult logistics. There are quarantines, there’s a lot of things that were not easy. But in EU, as I mentioned before, we do have our facility there for TL, and we have our staff there, we have our support system there. Logistically, a lot of things were easier for us as well. And our players, a lot of them being from Europe as well, were also excited to go back. Alphari mostly. He wanted to go back and showcase what he practiced this year. We were actually pretty happy that it was moved.
Jack: We haven’t been to China to compete since 2017, and we had an amazing time there, so I’m really sad to not see the fans out in China, and experience that, and I hope to return there again sometime soon. That said, moving to Europe definitely, as far as preparing and taking care of our players, it’s much easier to get set up, just because we have a lot more experience going out there and competing out there. So definitely, it’s an easier experience to get set up, and I’m really excited to get out there. We have a, I wouldn’t exactly say great history of performing in Europe. In fact, I think we’ve only not gotten out of groups two times, and both of those times happened to be in Europe. So I would like to change history, and look to have a more successful trip to Europe this time. I’m excited about that challenge.
The LCS Championship continues today, with 100 Thieves playing Cloud9 in the lower bracket finals. Stay tuned to Esports.gg for the latest League of Legends news and coverage, especially as we move towards Worlds 2021.
