I'm not following NACS news that much but I was going through the standings for all regions and checked NACS to see C9C won.
iirc, that means they take a spot for next season's LCS... So does this mean we get Cloud 9 AND Cloud 9 Challenger on the LCS team roster for Season 7?
Could someone clear this up for me?
No. There is no more auto-relegation. It means they have the #1 seed in the promotion tournament. And only need to win 1 (out of 2 chances) of a best of 5 series to get into the LCS.
I am more than confident they will get 1 of the 3 spots into the LCS. (With P1 and NRG probably getting back in but maybe TLA fighting over the other 2 spots and EchoFox being the odd man out.)
At that point, it will definitely get weird as C9 is not allowed to have 2 LCS slots so presumably the C9-C slot would be sold. But if I were a buyer, would I buy the slot "knowing" that Balls, Hai and Lemon (at least) would NOT be coming along. You are buying a spot with basically no team and then having to fill in with free agents of some kind. (I dunno about Altex and Contracx. They seem a little more likely to stick around.)
Maybe someone will do it, I dunno.
Or maybe the 3 long time C9ers would stay on but that seems doubtful to me. (And if they DONT stay on, can C9 the org just rinse and repeat.. keep using them to qualify for LCS then sell the "spot"?) It seems like a weird dynamic to me.
Ultimately, I'm seeing something like this happen:
C9C gets into LCS. Now, C9 can't own two LCS teams, so they sell the slot. Probably, an already established e-sports organization that doesn't currently play LoL will buy them (ex. Northern Gaming or Luminosity)
Hai, Balls, and LemonNation won't stay, but Altec and Contractz will (ADC and Jungle). So they'll need 3 players.
If Echo Fox gets relegated (I suspect they will) Froggen might find his way to this new team. So that's ADC, Mid and Jungle. I'm assuming NRG and P1 are the other teams that stay up. If NRG falls, Quas will be on this new team as the top laner and Kiwikid will round it out on support.
Support is the USA's best role. In the LCS, there's exactly one American mid laner (Pobelter), but there's a LOT of American supports (Aphromoo, Bunny, Adrian, Hakuho, Big, and a whole lot more). I'm expecting this new team to find an American support (especially thanks to the new import rules), but probably import a Korean top laner that we've never heard of.
Resulting in a newly rebranded C9C that isn't owned by C9, with the following roster:
Top: Quas (if NRG falls), if not this spot will be occupied by a Korean import Jungle: Contractz Mid: Froggen ADC: Altec Support: Kiwikid (if NRG falls), if not this spot will be occupied by a debuting American
The way teams are handled in the LCS is utterly ridiculous. It's like no one at Riot ever watched baseball, basketball, or football before and have no idea what real sports leagues handle teams. It's very hard for a new organization to get into the LCS without very deep pockets and likewise there's little incentive for even veteran teams to invest heavily in the sport because they could be eliminated at the end of any season and lose almost all their cashflow.
They've created a very volatile environment and need to restructure how the LCS is operated to create stability. Then they can start creating a real farm system, brands, etc. Most retired pro players could still be involved on teams in some capacity if they was any long-term security in place for teams to build beyond just a half a season at a time. This current system is one of the reasons some people still can't take LoL esports seriously.
