Riot is partnering with Coke Zero to run a league for the Challenger tier of competitive play in League of Legends. The yet-unnamed league, which will begin in 2014 in North America and Europe only, will run alongside next year's LeagueChampionship Series (LCS) and serve as an entrée into the LCS for the top-ranked Challenger players.Representatives for Riot and Coke Zero explained to Polygon yesterday how the Challenger tournament is intended to fix a major issue within League competition — and how its role brings League eSports further in line with real sports.Riot currently runs the top level of competitive play in League of Legends: the Championship Series, which the company announced last summer. For the select few teams in that upper echelon of competition, eSports is a career — a full-time job, with Riot paying salaries and stipends for the players on those squads. Below that level is the Challenger tier, the highest of six ladders of competition for amateurLeague players; it's currently limited to 50 teams.
But as it stands, there's no clear, organized pathway for Challenger players to make it to the LCS level and turn pro. Until now, the Challenger scene has been relatively fragmented, with most tournaments being run by a variety of organizations outside Riot. The company knows that's an issue, and it's attempting to address the problem with this new Challenger league.
"Every sport has a pretty aspirational path for how you go from just a little kid playing a sport to a professional athlete," said Dustin Beck, head of eSports at Riot, in a phone interview with Polygon. "And when we were creating the LCS, we knew that we were satisfying that top level of elite gamers who could actually be professionals. But we had a pretty big hole in the middle that didn't do anything to highlight what that path was going to be."