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Riot Games announced that the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) and League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Spring Splits will resume this weekend and be played remotely.
The remaining five weekends of the LEC Spring Split will be played online beginning on March 20, with teams playing from their respective training centers.
The LCS Spring Split will resume starting March 21. Riot also said that Academy Rush will be canceled and replaced with the five Academy games to be broadcasted back-to-back during Weeks 8-9; and that Monday Night League games will be moved to Saturday and Sunday going forward.
Related to the LEC, Riot said that the “show will be produced remotely from homes of LEC production and broadcast staff,” and that a planned week-long break play has been removed, with each consecutive weekend played until the Finals taking place on April 18 and 19.
“The LEC will be implementing a variety of measures to protect competition integrity to the extent possible in a remote environment, including additional cameras to monitor the rooms the players will compete in, fully monitoring voice communications, screen recording, and remote control ability, on top of other measures currently being considered,” the organization said in a release.
On March 12 Riot canceled live audience and onsite press attendance at the LEC Studio in Berlin for the remainder of the 2020 Spring Split due to concerns about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). A day later it announced that it had suspended the LEC Spring Split until further notice.
Earlier this month Riot suspended LCS operations and moved the Spring Finals from The Star in Dallas, Texas, to the LCS studio in Los Angeles. It also shifted the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) from May to July of this year.
More information on which gaming and esports events that have been affected by coronavirus to-date can be found here.
