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League of Legends Worlds 2023 Main Event to Start

Over the past week, fans witnessed the start of the 2023 League of Legends World Championships, as eight teams competed in the Play-Ins for a shot to compete in the Swiss Stage with the top teams from the top four regions.

The Play-Ins may not have featured the best teams at the tournament, but they still delivered exciting and dramatic matches that have fans anticipating a competitive Swiss Stage.

You won’t want to miss it as the best teams from Europe, North America, China, and Korea join the fray and kick off their tournament runs.

GAM Esports and Team BDS Survive Play-Ins

The opening stage of the tournament was exciting and dramatic, the perfect way to kick off such an event. Many could have predicted Team BDS’s qualification for the Swiss Stage. However, their trek through the Play-In Stage caused many LEC fans to worry as they fell to Team Whales in the opening match of Play-Ins.

Facing elimination, they were able to take down CTBC Flying Oyster, and DetonatioN FocusMe set up a qualification match with PSG Talon. PSG Talon jumped out to a 2-0 lead before Team BDS again, with their backs against the wall, pulled off the reverse sweep, finishing the Play-Ins with a 3-2 win.

GAM Esports had a similar journey to the Swiss Stage as Team BDS. They entered as the top seed of the VCS. With relatively high expectations on them, they found themselves on the losing side of a 0-2 match against CBLOL’s LOUD. They were able to make easy work of Movistar Rainbow7 in a 2-0 elimination match, setting themselves up for a rematch with LOUD in the Group A Decidier Match.

This time, GAM Esports was able to get the best of the Brazilian squad, winning 2-0. They faced off with a familiar opponent, fellow VCS member Team Whales, in the Qualification match. The match was competitive early on, with the score being 1-1 after two matches. Ultimately, GAM Esports was able to prevail 3-1, ending Team Whales’ amazing international debut.

Day 1 to Deliver Plenty of Drama

Attention now turns to the Swiss Stage, where the Top 16 League of Legends teams in the World will compete to try and qualify for the Knockout Stage Bracket, where eight teams will battle it out to determine the 2023 World Champion.

All qualification and elimination matches will be best-of-three, but the first couple of matches will be best-of-one’s, which should set up for a couple of crazy days to start out the Swiss. Games you don’t want to miss include Cloud9 vs. MAD Lions in the next iteration of North America vs. Europe, which should be ripe for drama.

Fans also won’t want to miss two of the tournament favorites in kt Rolster and Bilibili Pingang Bank closing out Day 1. You can catch all of the action on both Twitch and YouTube.

Swiss Stage Day 1 Schedule and Betting Odds

All times listed are in Eastern Time.

Thursday, October 19th

  • T1 (-1800) vs. Team Liquid (+700) – 1 AM
  • Cloud9 (-125) vs. MAD Lions (-112) – 2 AM
  • Gen.G Esports (-5000) vs. GAM Esports (+1100) – 3 AM
  • Beijing JDG Intel Esports Club (-1800) vs. Team BDS (+850) – 4 AM
  • G2 Esports (+124) vs. Dplus KIA (-162) – 5 AM
  • NRG (+500) vs. Weibo Gaming (-1000) – 6 AM
  • Fnatic (+340) vs. LNG Esports (-500) – 7 AM
  • Bilibili Gaming Pingang Bank (-138) vs. kt Rolster (+110) – 8 AM