Riot Games and Red Bull are teaming up with esports tournament organizer Battlefly to create a new online League of Legends event open to the United States public, the companies announced Friday.
The tournament, called the Red Bull Power Spike, will begin Monday and culminate with the Grand Prize Tournament on May 24. Players will compete for in-game prizes such as skins, with the Grand Prize Tournament champion getting the Hextech Alistar in-game skin -- along with plenty of bragging rights.
Organizers are also hopeful that the tournament will create new paths for professional hopefuls to LoL's premier North American series, the League Championship Series.
"We really want to spend some time on the LCS side, working through what our path to pro looks like," LCS commissioner Chris Greeley told Newsweek. "We want to give potential players and potential pros a much better and kind of clear route as to how a player can develop their skills from downloading the game to showing up on LCS stages and when we're able to open up that stage again, post-(coronavirus)."
Greeley added, "The development that we're looking for (from) North American talent to be the next wave of great players on stage to lead us into international events just isn't getting developed as fast as we want."
To that end, the Red Bull Power Spike will consist of 28 daily tournaments, with a maximum of 512 players each day. The event will be accessible through the League of Legends Discord channel. Other tournament information:
--One-on-one format
--Best-of-three matches
--Games will be played on the top lane of Summoner's Rift
--No jungle camps
--No pause time permitted
Winners will be determined by:
--First player to get two kills in the first seven minutes or one kill after seven minutes elapses
--First player to destroy their opponent's first tower
--First player to reach 100 cs
Daily tournament winners will advance to the Grand Prize Tournament.
"It's time for us to spend a little bit more time making sure that we can continue to foster these third-party tournaments in the amateur scene so that we're continuing to develop the talent that hopefully is going to bring a world championship home to North America someday," Greeley said.