The rivalry between North America and Europe in League of Legends is about to get even more charged.
Riot Games announced Tuesday the creation of Rift Rivals, a global offline international competition that will test some of the most heated regional rivalries in the world of League. From July 3- 9, North America and Europe will battle in Berlin, and there will be four other rivalries put to the test elsewhere in the world: South Korea vs. China and Taiwan, Oceania vs. Japan and Southeast Asia, Latin America North vs. Latin America South and Brazil and Turkey vs. CIS Commonwealth of Independent States.
Each Rift Rivals will be different, depending on the matchup. For the clash between the NA LCS and EU LCS, the top three clubs from each region's spring split (Team SoloMid, Cloud9, Phoenix1, G2 Esports, Unicorns of Love, and Fnatic) will compete. Unlike in the Mid-Season Invitational or the World Championship, however, the teams participating will be playing for their home league and region instead of for individual glory.
"Rift Rivals is really about teams going to rep their region," said Whalen Rozelle, director of esports at Riot Games. "You have TSM, Cloud9 and P1 [going to Berlin] to represent North America. Now you're not going to see them [play each other] because you already see that in the domestic league. They're there to beat Europe, basically. So essentially, we're looking to see [which region] is going to win, rather than which team."
The weeklong event will spotlight the top teams from each region that performed the best during the first split of 2017. With the competitions happening live in five destinations, Rift Rivals will be almost continuous action throughout the week, with Riot hoping for little overlap between the various clashes.
"We're trying to authorize the broadcast as much as we can to prevent overlap," said Chris Hopper, senior manager of Esports at Riot. "But we're not necessarily trying to build some sort of seamless 96-hour broadcast. We're not trying to Clockwork Orange anybody into watching [Rift Rivals] for that long in a row, but we do think by optimizing allowing the fans to watch different events globally, it does befit with how we've seen people want to be fans -- that they appreciate teams from across multiple regions."
Riot also announced its separation from the Intel Extreme Masters circuit of events. Over the years, the IEM preseason tournaments and eventual IEM World Championship in Katowice, Poland, had become a staple of the League of Legends pro calendar. But recently, the tournaments have been plagued with issues, with the most recent IEM event suffering from top teams withdrawing and China and North America declining to send teams.
Instead, Riot is focused on creating tournaments that benefit not only the viewers but the teams as well and is hoping to create international competitions that make teams want to participate.
"It's about balance," Hopper said. "[We want] international tournaments that fit well into the ecosystem with the overall theme and overall schedule, and people want to watch and are compelling for teams and players and fans to like. [That's] what we aim for."
Riot's most recent tournament, the Mid-Season Invitational in Brazil, was one of those events. It was the first time that Riot held a major international event in a "wild-card" region, and it turned out to be a success for the company, with the elongated format and addition of teams to the event working out in front of enthusiastic fans in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo.
On the subject of whether that means other budding regions might get a chance to hold an MSI-like event down the line, Hopper left the door open.
"It might not be next year, but there is hope in the future. There are a lot of logistics involved, and it's worth mentioning them all so the fans understand it's not that we have a bias for one region or another. We owe it to fans everywhere that tune into the event and the competitors competing that we make sure the logistics and experience are good, that the travel is not too long and that no one is withheld out from competing because their visa got declined."