After backlash at the announcement of the upcoming LCS season start times, Riot seems to finally listen to fans and has decided to change the start time from 12:00 PM PT to later in the day.
League of Legends fans haven't had much to be excited about in recent times, with a bad start to the 2023 LoL season, as well as some issues with the current state of ranked, as well as matchmaking. But before all that, fans of the LCS were already disgruntled before.
Well, it seems that ever since their season kick off f*ck up, Riot is taking communication and appeasing their players serious, because even LCS fans are getting some good news, as reported by Travis Gafford in an interview with Riot’s president of esports John Needham and global head of League esports Naz Aletaha.
LCS Days Will Stay The Same – Start Time Will Change Though
In the interview it was announced that the LCS, which was supposed to start Thursday and Friday's at 12:00 PM PT, will now begin their days two hours later at 2:00 PM PT and 5:00 PM ET. In the interview with Gafford, Aletaha elaborated on the time changes, stating that these are optimized for the North American audience.
These times were specifically chosen with audiences in the Eastern Time Zone, which is where 70% of their viewers come from, which is why they didn't want match days to end too late either for them, hence why the 5:00PM start seems ideal for players.
Okay, League of Legends is cool and all, but what about the upcoming fighting game?
Originally, with the 12:00 PM PT start time, many fans worried about the regions' popularity, as well as what these times would do to already dwindling viewership numbers. With the departure of Dash on the analyst desk, it seemed all hope for the LCS was lost by fans.
Riot has now made an effort to be more communicative when it comes to releasing information and not just dumping it on players without any explanation as to why Riot is making specific changes. Needham also hammered home the point that Riot was not giving up on the LCS and that the league continues to be one of their key regions.
League esports is, by far, the biggest esport on the planet, [and] the LCS is one of our more important leagues within that ecosystem. We’re not going to do anything that weakens or hurts the overall sport [or] the LCS.
So while VALORANT has been gaining more and more popularity, it seems that Riot is committed to the LCS and League of Legends esports for the coming years.