It’s a new era for the LCS, CBLOL, and LLA, as they are rumored to merge into one region.
According to community members of League of Legends, a meeting took place tonight that cemented a merge between the North American League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) with the Latin America Liga Latinoamérica (LLA) and Campeonato Brasileiro de League of Legends (CBLOL) to form an overall Americas region for LoL.
News began to break late on June 10th that suggested that a huge change was coming to the LCS and LLA. The first signs came from community members talking about an important meeting happening between Riot Games and many of its franchised esports organizations. It appears that this rumored meeting concerned a huge merger between the North American and South American leagues, consolidating both into one Americas region, taking a page from Valorant's book.
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LCS rumored to merge into Americas region
Riot Games has long been looking for a solution to steadily-declining LCS viewership and engagement, something that the developer made reference to in May with a post to the LoL Esports website titled "Adjusting our LoL Esports Strategy". In this post, the developer talked about reevaluating its systems, with unclear adjustments to come. According to emerging accounts, the biggest of these is the consolidation of the LCS, CBLOL, and LLA into one singular region. The first mention came from Nick "LS" DeCesare, who took to Twitter saying, "The future of the LCS going forward has just been made, now we wait and see when it comes to light."
This was followed by Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles clarifying what this meant, in-line with his previous speculations about the future of LCS. According to MonteCristo, the LCS would move to a single Americas region. In recent years, the LCS has seen increasing LATAM integration with Spanish-language streams, the recent integration of LLA broadcast technology, and more.
The merge seems eminently believable at this time, as it would mirror Riot Games' regional approach in Valorant. Matching both esports' regional system makes creating universal infrastructure easier for both Riot and organizations, and consolidates LCS, CBLOL, and LLA viewership into a single stream.
