Riot Games has maintained that the 2020 LCS Spring Finals will still hold next month but will be online as COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the world.
With government ordering lockdown and telling people at home and practising social distancing in a bid to limit the spread of the dreaded virus, Riot Games has decided to move the competition online.
In an announcement made on Monday, Riot said the competition would be held between Saturday, April 18 and Sunday, April 19.
The developers had decided some weeks to move the Spring Finals from Texas, which was the initially planned venue to its studios in Los Angeles as concerns continue to grow over the virus.
The figures of casualties have continued to be on the rise with Spain looking to be the new epicentre. The European country is likely to surpass its counterpart Italy with over 4000 deaths and still counting.
With the situation worsened, apart from Italy suffering the highest casualty, the case in the United States looks to be on the rise as well with over 2,000 confirmed cases of the virus and over 50 deaths reported state-wide.
With the health of players and fans being prioritised over the game, Esports games are now being played behind closed doors with social distance protocol being observed.
With the issue looking bleak, teams have been forced to play out the finals at their respective homes. However, what is yet to be known is how Riot will go about the finals without an offline venue or crowd.
With the COVID-19 scare, the audience experience would be absent although they play a massive part in the finals atmosphere. With Riot going ahead with the tournament, it will be hard to for both the players and fans
Although some larger events had been held online before, however, Riot might gain some online viewership as a result of this decision.
This could be like the Tyler1 Championship Series which is a fully-online tournament that always records viewership of over 50,000 people on Twitch.
Written by: Oladipupo Mojeed
