How to attend the Teamfight Tactics Vegas Open

Teamfight Tactics (TFT) casters and pillars of its community Dan "Frodan" Chou and Bryce "esportslaw" Blum had a chance to sit down with Riot Sherman to talk about all the updates regarding the LAN event in Vegas, the Teamfight Tactics Vegas Open (TFT Vegas Open), occurring between Dec. 8 and 10. Riot Sherman is the global head of TFT, Legends of Runeterra (LoR), and Project L Esports. The group was also joined by Jeffrey "Milk" Pan, a long-time professional TFT player and streamer.

Riot Games announced TFT's first-ever global LAN almost three months ago. The TFT Vegas Open will take place between Dec. 8 and 10 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Riot Sherman shared that the event has been over a year in the making. The idea behind putting the city in the name was to open the possibility of future events of this kind in other locations. Furthermore, "Open" comes from the event's similarity and influence of EVO, in which a large population that includes the general public has the potential to participate in the competition.

Passes to attend the event go on sale at 7 a.m. PT or 10 a.m. ET each day. Achieving a higher rank at the time of the snapshot will give early access and discounts. Riot Sherman said they want to reward players who invest time and effort into the game while also granting the general public and player base access to the event. Competitors will be buying into the main event and chipping into a part of the prize pool.

The ranked snapshot will be taken on Aug. 30 at 12:01 a.m. PT. Regardless of the region you play in, your TFT Set 9 rank at that time will determine the pass you'll be able to purchase. The details for seeding in the tournament determined by a Set 9.5 ranked snapshot have yet to be announced.

A website will soon launch with all of the information on the tournament itself, event registration, and buying instructions.

The points system will be 8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1 for 1st to 8th place, respectively. Players will compete in the same table for all their games of each round.

The finals of the TFT Vegas Open will be played in checkmate format. The first player to get 20 points and then take 1st place in a subsequent game will be the TFT Vegas Open Champion.

Below are the details on how the $300,000 USD prize pool will be distributed. A large share is concentrated at the top in order to make winning this first-ever global TFT LAN event special.

In addition to prize money, competitors will receive a special in-game emote for every round they advance to, including participating in the first round. The winner of the entire event will receive an exclusive one-of-a-kind TFT Vegas Open champion emote.

For competitors and spectators, there will be other events available aside from the main event.

Competitors who are knocked out in the first round will have a chance to sign up to a consolation bracket. The first 128 players to sign up to this event will participate and play in a smaller tournament of a similar format to the main event. There will be no prize pool, however. Instead, the winner will receive a trophy.

Side events that are designed for fun will be available to spectators and all players knocked out of the main event. There will be prizes available for those who participate.

During the Don't Talk If You Don't Know (DTIYDK) podcast, the live chat had a question and answer session with Riot Sherman. Here is everything he was able to share.

Answer: There is no hotel block discount to buy into. We did choose one of the cheapest parts of the year in Vegas. Once you get past Thanksgiving, December is a bit of a dead month. MGM also isn't the cheapest hotel on the strip, but it is connected to the tram system for convenience. We're hopeful that there are ways to make this trip affordable for those who need to travel.

(Note: There unfortunately do seem to be events in Vegas that weekend that is causing a spike in pricing).

Answer: We will not allow players to stream their POVs. It's a set-up and internet issue for the event. For all the players to have to take the time and effort to set up their stream and take bandwidth needed to run the event routed to their streams would be a big challenge. We are looking at ways to broadcast as many games as possible from the event. Riot has remote broadcast centers they've been building so they're looking to leverage those. Even if full games can't be broadcasted, the goal is to capture as many highlights and moments from as many games across the main event.

Answer: We have had a lot of discussions about this from a competitive integrity standpoint. I don't know where we've landed yet. We'll keep talking about it. There will be competitive operations staff that will make the final call.

Answer: No details to share on this right now. We are thinking about all the activities people can do in Vegas.

Answer: The way the venue is set up — spectators will be able to walk around from table to table and see live matches. We've talked about it, but again, I'm going to lean on my competitive operations staff for the final decision. There's a ton of ways that this could go. While I agree that active backseating does not make sense for the event, figuring out intent and enforcing a policy will be the challenge.

Answer: There's a great app called TFT Mobile, available at all times to play while in the venue. On a more serious note, there have been discussions for a mobile free play area. We do want to stress that the side events are really open for anyone and are for fun for people to enjoy.

Answer: We are expecting to have merchandise. We are excited to make players look as good as they play in TFT.

Will we see you at the TFT Vegas Open? Check out the official announcement of the event information here.

Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest TFT news and updates.