The details of that brand new League of Legends League of the Americas, the LTA, circuit for 2025 have finally been announced. The new format will bring together North American, Latin American and Brazilian leagues into one but the formats have made some fans unhappy to say the least.
The announcement was made via the official LCS X account and confirmed that fans from every American region will only have two chances to see live League of Legends actions in the new LTA, one conference in LA and another in São Paolo.
While the partner teams were quick to respond to the video with the excitement, the same can’t really be said for the fans.
Partner teams are those which will have a permanent place in the LTA leagues. For LTA North, these will include Cloud9, Team Liquid Honda, Flyquest, Shopify Rebellion and Dignitas.
Lyon Gaming will be joining the ranks from the LLA and Disguised will be coming from the NACL for the 2025 season.
100 Thieves will also join the teams in the North league as a “provisional guest team” despite selling their franchise slot back to RIOT Games. Since the slot will be reviewed throughout the next year, it’s not clear how often we’ll see 100 Thieves on the list of teams playing.
Playing for LTA South, we’ll get to see partner teams Fluxo, FURIA, LOUD, Pain Gaming, Red Canids Kalunga and Vivo Keyd Stars coming from the CBLOL, Leviatan will be a partner team from the LLA and Isurus will get their chance as a guest team for the 2025 season.
Hope you’ve got all that because this is where is gets more confusing.
The LTA is going to allow some, but not many by any stretch of the imagination, to play in both LTA North and South. The announcement confirmed that this new format will have some flexibility by allowing one player from anywhere in the Americas to be considered a “local resident”.
But the majority cannot play from outside their home region to protect the “regional identity”. All of this honestly seems like a fancy way of saying “stay in your lane” and will prevent players from jumping between the regions…that’s considered the same region.
The future of League of Legends Esports in the Americas.
Welcome to the LTA. pic.twitter.com/xSInyGkp3D
— LTA North (@LTANorth) October 31, 2024
The entire first split in 2025 will result in just 1 team from the entire LTA heading to face the best League of Legends players at the new international event.
The main criticism here is that only the top 4 from North and top 4 from South will even stand a chance. Unlike a other regions, there are fewer opportunities to play on the international stage, which is already too limited in the world of competitive LoL. From there, it’s just a hop, skip and 1 best of 5 to make it to the international event.
Things are equally unsatisfying in Split 2. I’m always wary of the best of 1 format, it really doesn’t allow teams to actually show their skill and it just comes down to who outdrafts who on the day.
The saving grace here is that 2 teams from the LTA will get to attend MSI – the winners of the North and South second split.
This is a brand new format for League of Legends and feels like a bit of an experiment. During split 3, teams will pick their next opponents live on stage. There are some controls in place, however. Teams with worse results in week 2 will pick their opponents for week 3 and they can’t pick someone they’ve already played.
Teams from the LTA will also have 2 slots at Worlds next year. After split 3, In split three, the best teams from both North and South conferences will receive qualifications to the Americas Regional Championship as well as a coveted slot at Worlds 2025.
In a way, it’s interesting to see RIOT mixing things up for this new region. I’m not sure how these teams will feel about being the guinea pigs of the League of Legends world but it’ll certainly keep things fresh.
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