2018 NA Academy League Summer Split
TL;DR
- NA Academy League Summer Split starts June 14. Match schedule is live.
- Thursday games will be broadcast by the NA LCS organizations starting at 4:00 PM PT
- Friday games will be broadcasted by Riot starting at 3:00 PM PT
- We’ve moved to a 6-team playoff format
- To accommodate the 6-team playoff, on both June 28 and July 19 we’ll run a double header where each Academy team will play 2 games.
The inaugural split of the NA Academy League went even better than we had hoped. Ten competing squads, a CLG miracle run that fell just short in an incredibly close race for the final playoff spot, and FlyQuest deservedly walking away with the final victory. Through it all, you expressed a desire for even more content and backed up your words with strong viewership. That said, we know there are still improvements we can make, and we’re excited to talk to you about some of the plans we have for Summer.
Thursday Broadcast
For the 2018 Summer Split, we’ll be partnering with nine of the LCS organizations to broadcast the NA Academy League matches every Thursday of the regular season. Riot will provide a feed to make sure the competitive integrity of the matches isn’t compromised but the rest will belong to the teams, and we’re looking forward to the casting, analysis, and communities to be very supportive of their home squad. You’ll be able to catch all the Thursday action on their channels and in their individual styles starting at 4:00 PM PT on June 14. We’ve also made sure that the two organizations not broadcasting matches won’t play each other on Thursdays, so you’ll never have to miss a game.
Worried about knowing where to catch all the action? We’ve got you covered! Links to each of the 9 teams’ streams can be found below. On games days you’ll be able to head over to the NA Academy League Twitch channel where we’ll provide access to the streams for both teams of every match.
The nine teams broadcasting are:
Riot will continue to broadcast all of the Friday matches starting at 3:00 PM PT over at Lolesports, Twitch, and YouTube.
Format
One of the most valuable resources NA Academy League can offer to its players is stage time. The opportunity to not only experience playing on the LCS stage, but also experience preparing for an LCS day (traveling, different food, makeup, etc.) is a resource that all teams agreed should be available to more Academy players.
In an effort to offer this valuable experience to more Academy players we’ll begin mirroring the LCS playoff format with six teams and all playoff matches held on stage in the NA LCS Arena. However, to make this happen we had to make some adjustments to the regular season. Adding a week of playoff matches to the end of the season meant we needed to figure out how to fit 9 weeks of regular season matches into 8 weeks of time. We wanted to avoid disrupting the Collegiate Championship so starting the season a week early was out, and Academy players are needed as subs during Rift Rivals and LCS Playoffs, so we couldn’t overlap with those events either.
We talked through several options with the teams, and ultimately decided that on two different Thursdays this season we’ll play double headers. This means that on June 28 and July 19, every Academy team will play two games each. We’ve made sure that these games are always on the second week of the LCS patch cycle, so teams will have the maximum amount of time to prepare, and they’ll still never play the same opponent within the same week. You can check out the full schedule here.
Don’t miss an exciting Week 1 of the North American Academy League broadcast on June 14 at 4:00 PM PT starting with CLGA taking on TSMA.
