Sunday’s face off between Clutch Gaming and Echo Fox may have had the strangest ending of any League of Legends match in recent history. On the other hand, Echo Fox had a commanding lead, and it would have been pretty difficult for Clutch Gaming to find a way back into the game. Because of this, Riot Games’ League Ops team made the decision to award the win to Echo Fox. The truth is, Clutch Gaming could have come back in their match — they were down 10k gold and seven turrets, so it wasn’t looki

With the 2018 Summer Split just a couple of days away, it’s almost time for the NA LCS to begin again. So, in honor of this upcoming split, the Rift Herald has gathered to spotlight a few of the 2018 Summer Split’s most underrated players and under the radar teams. The bottom three teams from this year’s Spring Split — FlyQuest, OpTic Gaming and Golden Guardians — made a grand total of four major rosters moves ahead of the Summer Split. For that reason, one of the most intersting things to watch

Riot Games released the numbers behind the viewership for the 2018 Mid-Season Invitational, stating that there were around 20 million concurrent viewers at its peak during finals. The finals was the high of the tournament, which saw around 11 million concurrent viewers on average across the 16 different platforms. The tournament was also broadcast in over 15 different languages. The final series between Kingzone Dragon X and Royal Never Give Up was an influential game in League of Legends histor

Just two days before the opening of the 2018 NA LCS Summer Split, Cloud9 has announced that it will be replacing three of its starting players in favor of their Academy League counterparts. Mid laner Nicolaj Jensen, ADC Zachary “Sneaky“ Scuderi and support Andy “Smoothie“ Ta, have all been benched from the Cloud9 starting roster, at least for week one. These roster changes were announced in a video that featured the Cloud9 main roster coach, Bok “Reapered” Han-gyu and Cloud9 founder and CEO Jack

But Lee took that to a whole new level on Wednesday morning when he played Darius bot lane in SKT’s second match of the LCK season. SKT went down to their opponent, Afreeca Freecs, early in the series, getting crushed in game one with Faker on Yasuo mid. With the meta as strange as it is, SK telecom clearly decided to switch some things up by sending Faker to the bottom lane as Darius with a Shen support. Sure, his opponent in the lane was Yasuo, but at least that Yasuo was played by Aiming, a r

The EU LCS Summer Split hasn’t quite started yet, but we already know where it’s going to end: the Palacio Vistalegre in Madrid. The Palacio Vistalegre stadium will play host to the EU LCS Finals and third place matches to determine the victors of the Summer Split as well as which team will be guaranteed one of Europe’s spots at the 2018 World Championship. The Palacio Vistalegre has a capacity of just over 14,000, and Riot is sure to announce ticketing info when we’re a little closer to the eve

Starting with the upcoming, 2018 Summer Split the League of Legends NA LCS will begin broadcasting on ESPN’s new streaming service called, ESPN+, Riot and ESPN announced on Friday morning. ESPN+ is the company’s new subscription based streaming service which offers certain live sports broadcasts as well as scripted entertainment around the world of sports. The partnership between ESPN and Riot was founded in large part thanks to Riot’s broadcast partnership with MLB Advanced Media that was annou

Royal Never Give Up has won the 2018 Mid-Season Invitational after defeating KING-ZONE DragonX 3-1 in the tournament’s finals. The finals MVP was Royal Never Give Up ADC Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao. One of the most famous players, both in China and the rest of the world, Jian was absolutely dominant against his Korean competition, finally earning an international championship in his fifth tournament. This split also marked Jian’s first domestic finals win since the Chinese regional qualifiers back in 2013

The 2018 Mid-Season Invitational has been a pretty memorable tournament on both sides of the Atlantic so far. In the first two days of the group stage, a world where Team Liquid managed no wins at all didn’t seem too hard to believe. Which brings us to the final match of the MSI group stage, a tiebreaker between Europe and North America, Team Liquid going up against Fnatic. The tiebreaker will kick off at the end of Flash Wolves and Royal Never Give Up’s clash for first place, and will close out

League of Legends will be one of six esports titles debuting at the 2018 Asian Games, as announced in a Monday morning press release. The Asian Games is one of the largest multi-sport events in the world, held every four years since 1954 (the first games were in 1951). “We’re honored that League of Legends was selected for the Asian Games,” Riot’s co-head of esports, Jarred Kennedy, said in the release. The 2018 Asian Games will be held in Jakarta, and host nation Indonesia will receive an autom

North America didn’t quite get the start to the 2018 Mid-Season Invitational fans were hoping for as Team Liquid falls to LCK champions and tournament favorites, KING-ZONE DragonX, in the first match on Friday. Team Liquid took an early upper hand in the match, gaining first blood, then executing a well-coordinated dive in the bottom lane. Team Liquid will be able to trace this loss back to one or two very specific decisions that could easily be improved for next match. Team Liquid will face off

ETEVOS Esports vs Flash Wolves, 6 a.m. ETKING-ZONE DragonX vs Team Liquid, 7 a.m. ETTeam Liquid vs Flash Wolves, 7 a.m. ETKING-ZONE DragonX vs Flash Wolves, 7 a.m. ETTeam Liquid vs Fnatic, 10 a.m.

Riot Games was presented with the first-ever Sports Emmy awarded to a video game company on Tuesday evening. The company won the award for Outstanding Live Graphic Design for the opening ceremony design for the League of Legends 2017 World Championships in China. Riot Games global executive producer Ariel Horn was the one to accept the award on stage. The Worlds opening ceremony with the Elder Dragon appearance is what pushed Riot Games to win this award and it’s certainly well deserved. So I gu

That being said, what happens in the practice room is still up to the team. The practice room at the Royal Palms hotel is warm, just like the Miami weather. Team Liquid’s practice room is so bright that the room almost has a light blue tinge to it. It wasn’t really like, uncomfortable, but it felt a little bit harder to focus because we had a lot going on. There was just a curtain blocking the two teams,” Price said, referring to the practice room for his third place match on Team Impulse.

Riot Games was presented with the first-ever Sports Emmy awarded to a video game company on Tuesday evening. The company won the award for Outstanding Live Graphic Design for the opening ceremony design for the League of Legends 2017 World Championships in China. Riot Games global executive producer Ariel Horn was the one to accept the award on stage. The Worlds opening ceremony with the Elder Dragon appearance is what pushed Riot Games to win this award and it’s certainly well deserved. So I gu

The 2018 NA LCS Summer Finals will be hosted at Oakland’s Oracle Arena the weekend of September 8, Riot Games announced Monday in a press release. Oracle Arena is best known as the home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and is currently hosting games in the NBA Playoffs. The Warriors are an affiliate of the Golden Guardians, one of the newest teams in the NA LCS. ”As an organization, we are looking forward to seeing the best of the NA LCS compete at our home court at Oracle Arena,” Kirk Lacob,

Sometimes the new ideas are outstanding and everyone loves them, other times, like at the new champion select at this year’s Mid-Season Invitational, not so much. This new champion select layout is what greeted fans in the first two matches of the play-in stage of MSI 2018, and they were not happy about it. By the third game of play-ins the old champion select was back, and everything was right with the world again. We sincerely appreciate your feedback on our test of a new broadcast look for ch

From its earliest moments, the results of the European Masters League of Legends tournament seemed like a foregone conclusion. Rounding out the roster was legendary Korean jungler Choi “inSec” In-seok and support Jesse “Jesiz” Le, who was on loan to the team from Fnatic. While this roster was successful in their goal, it’s not likely that this specific team will ever play together again. Tzortziou is unlikely to return to competitive LoL until at least 2019, according to a tweet of his from earl

The 2018 Mid-Season Invitational is right around the corner, but before we get to the main stage matches, we’ve got to see which smaller region teams will make it through the play-in stage. Each and every play-in stage, the teams involved get more and more competitive and this year shouldn’t be any different. The 2018 Mid-Season Invitational play-in stage will be broadcast on the Riot Games Twitch and Youtube channels, as well as on lolesports.com. Esports vs Pentagram, 8 a.m. Esports vs BAUSupe

The Mid-Season Invitational begins in a little more than a week and in preparation, Riot has let us know exactly who we can expect to see hosting 2018’s first international tournament. This year’s on-air talent will include 19 casters, hosts, and analysts from around the world all ready to take us through the action. While there are 19 total, it’s likely that not every member of this cast is likely to show up in both the play-in stage of the tournament and the main stage. For a full list of on-a