LCS Summer Week 1: Everything Going The TSM Way!

The North American League of Legends scene has finally returned with a bunch of exciting new things and some questionable ones that leave fans debating about the region’s organizations and how they handle decision-making towards their rosters. As the LCS Summer Week 1 concludes, we’ve been given more questions than answers so trying to make sense of it all has become an almost impossible task. For example, TSM has been shining brighter than any of the organizations this week with so much exciting news that makes even the haters drop their jaws to the ground!

LCS Summer Pre-Season

The LCS pre-season has been interesting so far with some very exciting news on the organizations, even one that is considered the biggest deal in esports history. The preseason is where most fans like to spend time to speculate amongst themselves about hints and rumors that they get from some LoL Reporters on Social Media. While most of the fans don’t really get their wishes, it’s still a good idea to take a look at some of the major changes happening in a competitive environment to check out whether a region is thriving or having difficulties with something.

1. TSM FTX & The $210 Million Deal

The cryptocurrency titan – FTX – has signed a deal with Team SoloMid to rename their handle into TSM FTX. The deal was reported to be a $210 Million deal for a simple name change, which is the biggest contract in esports history. The name change is now adopted by all of the social media personalities that are currently contracted with the organization. Unfortunately for the League of Legends team, the name change happened way too late into the start of LCS Summer Week 1 and so, Riot Games did not allow them to rename their handle for the rest of Summer 2021.

There’s nothing more to the deal except the renaming of the handle, but it’s enough to pull more publicity to the ever-popular cryptocurrency hype. If you’re a cryptocurrency user, we have good news for you here at LolFinity. The shop has now been updated to accept payments using major coins like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and more.

2. C9 Zven gets Benched?

It’s a hot topic that North America’s representatives have once again failed to proceed to the playoffs in an international tournament. Cloud9 was one of the Top 5 teams that were expected to show a strong performance in the Mid-Season Invitations 2021 in Iceland. When the tournament began, the team faced some horrible losses and some questionable wins against teams that they should easily beat. They were even the only team to lose against PentanetGG who was supposedly the weakest team in the Rumble Stage.

The players that fans thought underperformed on the world stage the most was Blaber and Perkz. Despite those players having poor performances, Cloud9 decided to experiment with their Academy ADC – C9 K1ng – on the starting position. This meant that C9 Zven would get benched during the LCS Summer Week 1 tournament. Whether this idea was a good one or not was entirely dependent on the org’s showing on week 1.

TSM Dominates Week 1

LCS Summer Week 1’s opening game was Team Liquid vs Team SoloMid. The fans thought that Team Liquid would make quick work of TSM in their first match, considering that they destroyed them in the Spring Playoffs and the fact that both teams retained their rosters from the previous season. Weirdly enough, TSM destroys Team Liquid and move on to their next games with complete ease.

TSM also made quick work of Evil Geniuses and finally beat Golden Guardians on the last day but that game looked a bit shakey at the beginning. With those 3 wins, TSM soars to the top of the standings with a 15-6 record. The team now has a great chance of making it to the Top 8 of the LCS playoffs for at least a chance to compete for one of the 3 seeds to participate in Worlds 2021. With TSM’s current form, they look like they can take on the other top teams in the league with no problem at all.

Cloud9’s Rough Start

Following C9 Zven’s transfer to the academy league, the fans’ speculation that Cloud9 would underperform was completely correct. On their first match in the LCS Summer Week 1 tournament, Cloud9 lost to Golden Guardians, which were the last-place team in the league. 100Thieves also smacked Cloud9 in a comeback victory which was disheartening to see if you were a C9 fan. Fortunately, some of our faith returned when they managed to beat Team Liquid at the last game of the week.

While C9 K1ng wasn’t solely responsible for their losses, it still asks the question on whether or not replacing Zven was a good idea. The Cloud9 org won’t be hasty as to quickly replace K1ng after only one week so we won’t be seeing Zven anytime soon at the LCS. A terrible first week doesn’t necessarily mean that the season is over for Cloud9. Luckily, the new system that the LCS has makes sure that Cloud9 has a good chance of making it to the LCS 2021 Playoffs even if they perform poorly for the rest of the split.

Is the New LCS Format a Bad Idea?

Doublelift once said “Spring split doesn’t matter”. It seems the LCS continues to show the players that they take the first half of the season very seriously. Having a terrible performance in the Spring Season can be extremely demoralizing. One of the players’ silver linings is that they’d have a clean slate come the Summer Season. This format erases that silver lining and forces players to take the first half really seriously because the results will be carried over to the Summer Season and heavily impact their chances to make it to the Top 8.

The LCS’ new format is definitely an improvement to boost the competitiveness of the orgs. Unfortunately, it also sentences teams that performed poorly in the first half to death unless they have a drastic improvement that allows them to win at leas 80% of their games. After LCS Week 1, we saw that some teams are definitely better than their spring selves while some are cradled under the safety of performing well at spring. For us, this format isn’t a great idea which makes us hope that 2022 will be better for the North American League of Legends scene.