hello everyone and welcome back for our summer explainer video where we will cover format changes schedule some new watch experiences and some hype NL news I hope everyone enjoyed watching Team Liquid troun fanatic at MSI and yes we are only paying attention to head-to-head and ignoring everything else that happened with that tournament anyways let's kick this video off with a very poorly kept secret we are super excited to announce that the LCS will be introducing single round robin best of three format for the summer split regular season it's something that fans have been asking about for a while and we feel like it's finally the right time to test this our goal primarily around this change is fan and Pro Player satisfaction we adopted a fan first mentality for 2024 and this change is a continuation of that best of three provides teams with up to 50% more games on stage as well as focusing on a single opponent for the week and having mid-series adaptations we plan to maintain the blistering pace of show however from the regular season in spring so we'll be targeting 9 Minutes between Nexus fall and the start of Champion Select in games in a series I want to emphasize the word test here and share a little bit more of our thinking the goal of this change is not to increase viewership in the short term and we would not be surprised if it dipped a little bit as a result we anticipate core fans to enjoy the change but we needed to be supported by the entire viewer base last time the LCS tried best of Threes back in 2016 it was alongside dual streams and viewership suffered ever since then it has been a topic of a very Lively debate online 2024 is the ideal time to revisit best of Threes with the reduction to eight teams as with 10 the scheduling was always is difficult with one matchup awkwardly stranded on its own on a different day we've seen some people also requesting Fearless this split for the LCS given its best of Threes And while we're open to that idea in the future the priority is getting clean data around best of Threes for the LCS the final nugget to note is that historically viewership does tend to drop between spring and summer splits and we will weigh 2024's viewership against that history even if this test Prov successful that does not mean that best of three is suddenly the future for LCS for all time but rather it helps us know what on the table for decisions in 2025 and Beyond at the risk of derailing this video we're super happy to discuss all that with the community at a later time we will parlay the regular season best of Threes into a more intense focus on competition for playoffs as well with three spots at World on the line we've modified our spring playoff brackets to start all the teams on the winner side with seeds one and two getting first round buys additionally se1 will be able to choose where they start in the upper bracket depending on which set of opponents they prefer for the losers bracket we've resurrected an old favorite with the gauntlet from the olden days teams will drop into that Gauntlet based off where they lose in the upper bracket as well as their regular season seating the goal of all this is to make the single round robin best of three Stakes even higher with the amount of effects it has on the playoff bracket on to the schedule so the LCS will be back starting June 15th for opening week presented by MasterCard with a single round robin of play we decided to eliminate super weeks and stretch those two extra Fridays into a week seven best of three also means that not every team is playing every day so make sure to grab your tickets for your favorite matchups as soon as possible tickets at the link below you'll see that like spring there are some wrinkles to the LCS summer schedule weeks two and weeks four will be played in the LCS bof space with updated looks for the summer split that first week of July is the Esports World Cup that the LCS and other regions are pausing for to prevent player fatigue for the teams traveling and we want to give Pros time to rest and recover for the LCS we have chosen to have a second week off as well along that same vein we spoke with players and decided to move week three to Thursday and Friday as a result after the break the LCS will pick back up on July 20th we shared our thinking around similar situations in Spring and that reasoning still pretty much holds true in summer if you're not up to speed check out our videos from Spring split now that you know what's in store for summer let's talk about some of the new things we're spinning up to improve the watch experience for existing hardcore LCS fans we'll be rolling out a new twitch extension on our official Channel during gameplay viewers can click around and pull up detailed build and game information live as it's happening this is especially set for us on live patch granting fans even more knowledge to use immediately in their own games we owe our friends down in the CB a shout out for helping us create the LCS version if you use this feature please let us know what you think and what you'd like to see at it we also want to improve the Casual watch experience by partnering up with select watch parties around North America during the regular season not just for finals this is a great way to build bonds with fans of league in your area as well as potentially introduce your friends to the LCS we'll be sending merch swag and more to these watch parties follow the LCS socials for updates on which weeks and locations we'll be hosting one that's going to do it for all the LCS updates I'm going to hand it over to Zach for everything around the NL thanks Commish hi everyone my name is Zach AKA Riot wle and I lead the NL we're excited to announce that Brandon sanderson's Dragon steel and otk's star Forge systems will be joining the NL Mark and I have been working closely together on how to keep leveling up the NL and our tier 2 ecosystem the two core ideas that kept cropping up were how do we continue to drive towards team sustain ability and how do we continue to generate fandom around the NAC we especially like the success of organizations like disguised which paired the excitement of influencers with Grassroots support towards the players lots of people like toast are interested in Esports but actually creating an organization is a daunting task so we created a partnership framework that enabled all the fun of owning an Esports org without the challenges of operating one we're jokingly dubbing it the new naacl North American celebrity League they will be directly partnering with existing NL teams to provide financial support as their players pursue going pro in return the incoming orgs will be able to channel their Esports fandom by integrating with teams on the broadcast in this case dragon steel will be partnering with mville University while star Forge systems will be partnering with Cincinnati fear this model is a huge win for everyone exciting new partners get to dip their toes in the ecosystem n ACL teams get help towards sustainability and most of all the fans now have more options than ever to find an NL team to reach root for we hope you'll give a warm welcome to our new competitors as they take to the rift this summer speaking of let's talk about the best format to ever exist Fearless draft last split was the first time we tried out Fearless draft and the overall feedback was really positive in fact the most common feedback we received was that it didn't go far enough that's why in summer we're excited to announce the NL will be going full Fearless this means that anytime either team picks a champion not either team can play it for the remainder of the series including for b5s that said we don't want b5s to get too chaotic which is why game four teams will be limited to only their first round bans three Champions per team in game five teams won't be able to ban anything it'll just be the 40 Champions picked previously in the series that won't be allowed speaking of b5s we also heard your feedback that you wish there were more and we agree that's why we're doubling the amount of b5s in our playoffs this last but not least the NL will be introducing muddy matches in summer this is something that you may be familiar with from other Esports but it's exactly like it sounds the winner of a specific match will walk away with cash prizing during the an sales super weeks on weeks four and five we'll give each NL team two money matches to create some extra opportunities for teams and players to Banter while chasing that extra prizing on the line the Nal teams were really excited about this concept and felt it was a great way to spice things up during the middle of of the season so that's all I have time for in this video but make sure to check out the accompanying Nale primer article for more information on our schedule formats as well as our new naacl money matches our new YouTube channel and the naacl qualifiers with all that said it's time to pass it back to everyone's favorite commissioner to close us out take it away Mark thanks Zach that should do it for everything you need to know on how to enjoy the summer split let us know what you're most excited about in the comments below that's going to do it for us here and we'll see you back for the start of the Season June 15th n