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The pinnacle of the League of Legends competitive season is finally upon us as the best teams in the world gather in South Korea to crown the 2023 League of Legends World Champion.
Just before the start of Play-Ins, the LEC’s Team BDS was able to take down the LCS’s Golden Guardians in the Worlds Qualifying Series to become the 22nd and final team to qualify for the World Championships.
The attention now turns to the two Play-Ins, where two Groups of 4 will battle it out amongst themselves to be one of the top two teams in each group that will be put into a bracket for the chance to win their way into the Knockout Stage of the World Championship.
In Group A, four of the strongest teams from the developing regions will battle it out, while in Group B, teams will be looking to prove that they can take down talent from the LEC in Team BDS. You can catch all of the action on YouTube and Twitch.
Group A
Group A consists of GAM Esports of the VCS, LOUD of the CBLOL, PSG Talon of PCS, and Rainbow7 of the LLA. GAM Esports is coming off a solid split, winning the VCS Dusk 2023 split.
They were able to end the group stage with an 11-3 record before winning the Playoffs via a clean run through the winners’ bracket, a feat that all of the teams in Group A share. PSG Talon ended their season with a 16-2 record, while Rainbow7 ended with a 7-0.
The only team in Group A not to enter their domestic league’s playoffs as the top seed was LOUD, who entered the CBLOL Split 2 of 2023 Playoffs as the 3rd seed and is the only one of the four teams that didn’t enter the Playoffs as the top seed but was still able to have a perfect run through playoffs.
Group B
The other Group is made up of the CTBC Flying Oysters of PCS, DetonatioN FocusMe of the LJL, Team Whales of the VCS, and Team BDS of the LEC.
The team that sticks out of all eight Play-In teams is, of course, Team BDS. It is the only team from a major region participating in this year’s Play-Ins and will have high expectations of them from the competitive League of Legends community, at least in the early stages of the tournament, as the competition is viewed as less competitive than some of the teams they’ve beaten back home in Europe.
However, no one should be sleeping on any of the teams in the Group, as they’ve all proven themselves to get to this point.
The CTBC Flying Oyster squad finished the PCS Summer Split Regular Season with a 9-9 record, which seeded them into the lower bracket for the start of the Playoffs. They still battled back and made it to the finals, where they’d battle in a 2-3 loss, proving their fighting spirits.
Team Whales found themselves in the Lower Bracket early in the VCS Dusk Playoffs but battled to the Championship match as well. While DetonatioN FocusMe entered the LJL playoffs as the top seed and walked away with the crown.
None of these teams should be underestimated, as the League of Legends World Championships have proven time and time again that anything can happen under the bright lights on stage.