How do you convince a region to give away their worlds spot?
Big Changes in League of Legends: How Did Riot Get the TCL on Board with the New EMEA Ecosystem?
Riot Games revealed they are making significant changes to what we already know as the LEC. Already next year, the E in LEC will have a broader meaning, including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, also known as EMEA. With these changes, the TCL will belong to EMEA and consequently lose its Worlds spot. We talked to the Director for League of Legends Esports in EMEA at Riot Games, Maximilian Peter Schmidt, about the process of bringing the Turkish league on board with the new changes.
We are heading into the second decade of League of Legends Esports, and Riot Games are looking for new ways to improve the professional LoL scene. The newly announced changes to the LEC Ecosystem are an attempt to bring competition and entertainment to new heights and give way for more players from all around the world to compete at the highest level.
With the new changes, we are looking at the Turkish League joining the ERL Ecosystem as one of the thirteen regions competing to move up to the EMEA Masters. This means that the Turkish region, which used to have one spot in Worlds for their first-place team, will now have to use other measures to reach international success.
League of Legends: EMEA Looks to Make the TCL Stronger Than Ever
During a personal interview with Maximilian Peter Schmidt talking about the new LEC, we asked how the process of getting the Turkish league on board with the new changes had been.
Firstly, Maximilian wanted to clarify that this change was by no means an attempt to degrade the position of the TCL in any way.
Until now, TCL has been able to send their top team to compete in the play-in stage in the League of Legends Worlds Championship, and this merges will remove this possibility for the Turkish league, so what made them agree to the major changes?
Maximilian explained that they have been in close talks with the Turkish players, and the main argument has always been that this change will look to make the TCL stronger than it has ever been. This is also the argument that convinced the TCL to be a part of the EMEA Ecosystem going on forwards.
With Türkiye joining the EMEA ecosystem, they will be able to compete in the LEC as resident players and will not be subject to the Interregional Movement policy when participating in the LEC. Simply put, they will no longer be considered an import in the LEC. The Turkish players will also have a bigger platform to promote themselves, giving them more pathways to reach the highest level of competition in EMEA.
To summarize, the TCL might be losing their Worlds seed for Play-ins, but now they will be offered more possibilities to reach the highest level of competition in the EMEA scene and achieve international success through the EMEA ecosystem.
The new LEC will already be up and running early next year, and with all the upcoming roster changes, we are excited to see new and old players compete for the first-ever League of Legends EMEA Championship Trophy.
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