With most of the NA LCS teams announcing their rosters this week, imports were to be expected. Since franchising is coming to North America, more money is available to every team more than ever before. With EU LCS not franchising until next year, many of their players were drawn to North America for huge pay increases.
Big names such as Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage, Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten, Alfonso “mithy” Aguirre RodrÃguez and Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen are all rumored/confirmed to be playing in the NA LCS next split. While there have been cases of a few EU players leaving to North America, this is the first time so many stars have all gone at once.
Many are excited for the NA LCS as franchising has helped create some new and interesting competitive rosters. While North American fans are rejoicing at how competitive the league looks to be, EU fans are left distraught.
Replacing stars
It wasn’t long ago when many of the Korean superstars left to team up in China. Chinese teams offered ridiculous paychecks that Korean organizations were not willing to match. This wasn’t an issue as Korea has been the epicenter of professional League of Legends talent. Teams in Korea have a way of developing talent quickly and efficiently to where the exodus wasn’t felt at all. Korea still took home the world championship that year and still touted the best teams in the World.
Europe will face this same hardship with much less organization and infrastructure. With many teams losing out on stars, the few stars left are attempting to team up together. With Korea notably having one of the most competitive solo queue ladders, it will be interesting to see if EU can find talent among their own competitive scene. EU has far less money and less infrastructure going forward, especially compared to the other main regions.
It will be interesting to see if large fan bases stick around. Most notably Unicorns of Love lost many of their key stars already this off season. Will fans look to NA to watch their favorite EU stars?
Less competitive?
If people thought EU LCS was top heavy last season, one can only expect it to get worse. Many of the fan favorite teams of EU LCS lost core members/personalities. Most of the top EU players will most likely be looking to team up to create the best possible roster. This will likely make EU even more top heavy than before with all the talent funneling into a few teams.
The quality of play may drop as well with so many players leaving, as many of the new rosters will be unfamiliar with one another. This could lead to more hectic clown fiesta games at least for a split while teams recover from this exodus. This could see the overall quality of play drop significantly at a point where EU was beginning to look like they had been getting stronger.
This exodus could be a major step back for the region with franchising rumored to be coming in 2019. 2018 will be a year to watch in EU. With format changes rumored and the EU exodus taking place, the region looks to be in limbo. Time will tell if they’re able to stay competitive and represent their region well on the World stage once again.
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Cover photo by Riot Esports
