With Royal Never Give up winning the Mid-Season Invitational, they have assured that the LPL and the LCK will be sending a fourth team to Worlds.
MSI has just ended with a dramatic five-game series where RNG finally conquered their demons and took down T1 to become the first team with 3 MSI trophies. In addition to the prestige and the prize pool, however, the two teams secured something else for their leagues - guaranteed fourth slots for the LPL at Worlds 2022.
The reason for this is a rules update from last year on the MSI prizing and rewards. In short, there are two “flexible” slots at Worlds since the 2021 rules update. One goes to the region of the MSI winner - the LPL - while the other is awarded to the region that has had the most consistent international performances over the last few years. The two slots must go to different regions, however, so with the elimination of both western teams at the semifinals the LCK and the LPL have guaranteed themselves four representatives at Worlds, as last year.
The extra seeds would have to make their way through the play-ins as in previous years, but as we saw last year even the fourth teams from the Chinese and South Korean regions have little trouble making it to the groups. LPL's LNG Esports - ended up eliminated in a freak four-way tie in its group and a tiebreaker loss to MAD Lions. The fourth seed LCK team Hanwha Life Esports tied RNG for first place in its group before losing the tiebreaker and getting eliminated by T1.
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Professional League of Legends continues on June 7th with the start of the LPL summer split. In the meantime, make sure to follow our coverage for more news and analysis!