For any North American League of Legends fans, this is a big weekend. It is the LCS Summer Finals weekend! And after 2 years of a pandemic preventing a full in-person audience from attending, it is shaping up to be the biggest LCS finals ever.
Riot Games, creators of League of Legends, is effectively making a mini-convention out this weekend, September 10th and 11th. While the actual event is happening in Chicago at the United Center, hundreds of thousands of fans will also be tuning for all the festivities through the LCS Official Twitch and YouTube.
One would think that the 3 teams competing in the actual Tournament to become the Summer LCS Champions are the main event, but they would be mistaken. Due to the sheer size of this event, there are multiple main attractions and there is one name, one person that dominates them all this weekend. He is not on any of the competing teams, yet he has more fans than all three of the teams combine. His name is Tyler1.
Anyone who plays League of Legends throughout the world knows who Tyler1 is. Many know him for his outbursts of rage at the game League of Legends on his twitch streams, but he is also the only player in the world to achieve the highest rank in League of Legends (Challenger) on all 5 roles. Tyler1 will the be main face of the show on both days of this year’s LCS Summer Finals.
The festivities this weekend start outside of the United Center in Chicago at 10 am central and at 11am, Tyler1 will take the stage for the first time for a fan meet and greet. For fans who will be attending the tournament in person, this is rare opportunity to meet Tyler1 because he does not attend many events. However, this is only the warmup for what will happen the next day.
Other events happening on Saturday September 10th include ‘This or That,’ a mainstay segment in the LCS broadcast that is similar to the game ‘Would you Rather’ but only has questions regarding North American LCS. There is also a special pre-match broadcast that starts an hour before the battle between the teams 100 Thieves and Evil Geniuses for a spot in the LCS finals on Sunday against Cloud 9.
Sunday is where most of the excitement is though. Tyler1 is coming back and facing off against Doublelift, a retired LCS player who made a name from himself as the best AD carry of all time in the LCS. Tyler1 and Doublelift will battle it out in their own tournament. Starting at 10 am the United Center on Sunday the 11th, Tyler1 and Doublelift will be doing a school yard draft, picking from a select group of fans to compete on their teams in a show match against each other. The show match will start at 11am and 8 lucky fans will be playing alongside their team captains in Tyler1 and Doublelift to vie for their chance to hoist the show match trophy and earn special prizes for competing. This show match is going to run all the way up until 1:30pm, after which, another hour long pre-game show will lead into the LCS Summer Finals.
The LSC Summer Finals is always hype. All the of the teams playing, 100 Thieves, Evil Geniuses and Cloud 9, have already qualified to play in the World Championship starting at the end of September, but their seating is determined by how well they play in the LCS Finals. The Sunday finals are guaranteed to be good. Cloud 9, the team that has already secured their spot and have been spouting a lot of banter. Coming into playoffs, they were ranked 5th out of 8 and thus, most people had written them off. Now, Cloud 9 find themselves already in the finals and the rank 1 playoffs team, Evil Geniuses, and the rank 2 playoffs team, 100 Thieves, are competing on Saturday just to get a chance to play against Cloud 9. While most fans hope it is much closer, Cloud 9 has predicted that they will clean sweep any team they face in the Finals.
If you are a League of Legends fan, this weekend will definitely be worth tuning into because it is packed full of events, banter, and best of all, Tyler1.
