League of Legends: DreamHack to operate 2020 UKLC, replacing LVP
| Tags: Dreamhack, League of Legends
| Author David Hollingsworth
DreamHack will run and operate the 2020 regional UK League of Legends series the UKLC. DreamHack will take over the operation of the UK event after LVP dropped out in November.
The UKLC is the UK & Ireland’s regional League of Legends competition. The event will be run by DreamHack in partnership with Riot Games UK.
The event will follow a similar format to the DreamHack run Nordic Championship, with Seven weeks of league play (up from six in Nordic Champs), starting on February 4th through March 18th, 2020 broadcast live every Tuesday and Wednesday. The UKLC will end with a Grand Final in Stockholm, Sweden on March 22nd and 29th.
The event features £60,000 ($80,000 USB) in prize pool, which is a huge increase on the $20,000 USD on offer for the Nordic Championships. Likely down to the higher profile of some of the sides in the UKLC, with DreamHack confirming LEC Academy sides, Fnatic Rising and Excel UK will be taking part. The remaining six sides will be announced shortly. DreamHack has not confirmed how the six sides will be chosen.
Mo Fadl, Head of Publishing for Riot Games in the Nordics, had this to say: “We’ll also be drawing on DreamHack’s expertise to operate the UKLC over the course of the Spring Split. UKLC is a longer-term project and we’re looking to roll out the new-look ecosystem for the Summer Split.”
The Future of UK LoL
Much like the Nordic Championships, the UKLC will be played online, up until the Grand Finals, with the broad hosted live from the DreamHack Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. For the Grand Finals, competing teams will be battling out for the title live from the studio.
This means that players, whom three of which are likely to be UK or Irish residents (this rule is not confirmed, though would be similar to most regional leagues). It would mean flying out the top four sides to Stockholm for two weekends at the end of the season, alongside the possibility of casters traveling to Sweden each week, assuming DreamHack doesn’t use Sweden based casting talent.
So while the UK event returning in 2020 is great news, it comes with the downside of the event not being hosted in the UK or Ireland. Having a Grand Final hosted in the UK wouldn’t be too hard and we hope in future DreamHack looks to invest more in the UK scene, something previous organizer LVP attempted to do before leaving the region.
Mo Fadl and Marcus Lindmark of DreamHack did announce that more details are set to be unveiled for the 2020 Summer Split, so our hope is that DreamHack, who will be running the even at fairly short notice can go big for the second part of the 2020 season.
David has written for games media outlets for the last ten years. With his first major esports role being with Esports News UK covering mostly UK League of Legends. David is also a member of the British Esports Association and is an advisor to them on World of Warcraft Esports. More recently David has worked for Esports Insider and Red Bull as an esports journalist.
David later became Editor at ESTNN and now leads the current team.