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Why Does Valorant Champions Have Double Elimination and Not LoL Worlds?
Why do Riot Games have a different format for the League of Legends and the Valorant World Championship?
The biggest event in League of Legends is about to start, and this is the first time since Covid 19 hit that we will have a live audience from beginning to end, so we are bound to be excited! League of Legends Worlds is where the best of the best in each region come together to compete for the Summoner's Cup.
Also about to begin is the Valorant Champions. This event is the Valorant equivalent to League of Legends Worlds. Even though League of Legends has been going for a longer period and has gained quite an audience from every region, Riot Games have avoided a double-elimination format in the major LoL competition, despite many fans complaining about the single-elimination format.
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For the Valorant Champions, however, Riot Games have decided to have a double-elimination format in both the Group Stage and Playoffs.
Why is that? Is Riot going to change their format for the League of Legends World Championship in the future, or are there other reasons why they stick with another format for LoL?
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Valorant Champions' Double Elimination Format
The Valorant Champions 2022 has two different stages, Group Stage and Playoffs, and strangely enough, both stages have a double-elimination format.
Valorant Champions Group Stage
First in the Valorant Champions comes the Group Stage consisting of four groups with four teams each.
During the Group Stage, the top team in each group (T1) will compete against the bottom team of each group (T4), and the second best team (T2) will meet the third best team (T3) in the opening matches. If you lose in the opening match, you are not eliminated but will go to the Elimination Match.
- Opening Match 1: T1 vs. T4
- Opening Match 2: T2 vs. T3
Following the opening matchets comes the Winner's and the Elimination Match. You are eliminated when you lose the Elimination Match, and if you win, you are placed in the Decider Match.
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If you win the Winner's Match, you are placed in first place out of your group and have secured a spot in the Champions Playoffs. However, if you lose the Winners match, you are not eliminated but will be placed in the Decider Match.
- Winner's Match: Winner Opening Match 1 vs. Winner Opening Match 2
- Elimination Match: Loser Opening Match 1 vs. Loser Opening Match 2
For the decider match, the team winning will place second in their group and continue to Playoffs. The loser is eliminated.
- Decider Match: Winner Elimination Match vs. Loser Winner's Match
Valorant Champions Playoffs
The Valorant playoffs format is similar to general double-elimination bracket formats. First, the top team of each group will be placed with a second place team from another group. If you lose once, you will not be eliminated but placed in the lower bracket. Once you lose in the lower bracket, though, you are out.
League of Legends' Single Elimination Format
The League of Legends format is divided into several parts; Play-Ins, Group Stage, Quarter Finals, Semis, and Finals. First, we have play-ins where teams compete in best-of-ones, and only the two top teams continue to the group stage. Then, following Play-Ins, is the Group Stage, which has a similar format as play-ins.
After Group Stage, the LoL World Championship continues with a single-elimination format all the way from Quarterfinals to the Worlds Finals. You can read more about the Worlds format here.
Why Doesn't League of Legends have a Double-Elimination Format?
Now, only one question remains: Why doesn’t Riot use a similar format for the League of Legends World Championship as they do for Valorant?
Right now, Riot Games have not come out with official reasoning as to why League of Legends is insistent on the single-elimination format. So, for now, we can only exclude some possibilities.
The reason for League's lack of double-elimination for Worlds can not be that the fans do not wish for it. In fact, many fans are asking League of Legends to implement the double-elimination format also for Worlds, but with no success so far.
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The question was again brought up on Reddit recently, and it turns out that many thought for a long time that Riot was against the double elimination format, but with Valorant Champions adapting it themselves, this cannot be the reason either.
Maybe, Riot believes that League of Legends doesn't fit a double-elimination format, but that would be strange considering that some regional leagues do have double-elimination.
As you can see, all we can do for now is speculate on why it is as it is. Why do you think Valorant Champion and League of Legends Worlds follow different formats?
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