A New Era for Esports in Latin America: League of the Americas 2025
The League of the Americas (LTA) is here to radically change the landscape for professional League of Legends in North, Central, and South America starting in 2025. Here’s what you’ll want to know about the change and how it could affect competitive LoL.
The End of an Era and the Birth of LTA
In June 2024, the Los Angeles-based video game company Riot Games announced that beginning in 2025, the competitive League of Legends ecosystem will be reorganized into a continent-spanning series of multi-region leagues. A new competition, the League of the Americas (LTA), has been created to house teams from North America, Brazil, and Latin America under a single banner. According to Town & Country, the purpose is to ‘streamline the path to international competition [while creating] more competitive games on the continent.’ The LTA comprises formerly separate leagues: the North American LCS, Brazilian CBLOL, and Latin American LLA.
The unification also spells the end of the traditional leagues, as the 2024 season will be the last for LCS, CBLOL, and LLA as they currently are. The LTA will adopt a two-conference format, LTA North and LTA South, with the intent of spurring each region’s growth and providing a level competitive playing ground for teams across the Americas, consisting of eight teams, with six of them coming from the remaining teams in their respective leagues (LCS, CBLOL, LLA) and two new teams – one Latin American partner team and a new guest team slot. So, as a result, several teams competing in LCS, CBLOL, and LLA won’t make the cut to the new format, with only the best teams advancing to the inaugural season in the LTA.
A Fresh Approach to Regional Competition
A three-split format, similar to the single-game series matches per Split of NA LCS qualifiers, will take place for all LTA North teams competing for North America and Northern Latin America. The first Split (which begins on 3 April with a double-elimination, best-of-three bracket) will be the preliminary stage, with teams determining their rankings and moving Split, the top four teams of LTA North will crossover against the top four teams of LTA South where the first-place finisher will receive a spot on Riot’s new international event. The LTA North will include well-known teams such as Complexity and Team Civil and new competitors from Central and South America, including Flamengo e-Sports and GOG e-Sports. With a new league format, an international stage for North American and Latin American teams, new faces in the competitive scene, and a prize pool of $30,000 (per Split), there are plenty of loose ends and storylines in the League of Legends competitive world.
The second Split, known as ‘regional growth,’ will continue with a double round-robin stage that features League’s play for best-of-one matches – the winning teams at the end of this Split will compete in a playoff for the attendance to the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), given an international crown to North American and Latin American teams.
The third Split features Riot’s brand-new Pick & Play system, which allows teams to choose their opponents based on previous rankings. For three weeks, teams will race to climb the regional standings. After each stage, the top three teams will qualify for the Americas Regional Championship (ARC), where they will square off against the best from LTA South for a spot at the World Championship and the coveted LTA Trophy.
Bringing Brazilian and Latin Talent to the Forefront
The LTA South Conference divides the best teams from Brazil and Southern Latin America into their own conference in a format mirroring the North Conference. As per Town & Country, the first Split will be double-elimination, ‘with the top four South teams crossing over vs. the top four North teams.’ If this structure plays out as it seems to suggest, then Brazilian teams are bound to give each other a tough time.
So the second Split will once again be a double Round-Robin (ala LTA North) for the top region-based teams to battle it out among themselves so they can get direct qualification for MSI, guaranteeing SA a strong presence on the world stage. Then, in the third Split, the Pick ͆ Play system will be introduced to its purest form – teams can figure out their own weekly schedule. Simply put, only the three best teams from the South can advance to the ARC to take on teams from the North Conference, battling it out for a spot at Worlds and for that coveted LTA Trophy.
For the first time, South American and Brazilian teams can compete at basically the same level for a spot in Worlds, fostering new talent, gaining regional pride, and enhancing the quality of Latin American esports players around the world due to the intensive regional rivalries created between North and South Conferences.
The Grand Finale
The season will be resolved at the Americas Regional Championship (ARC), which will pit the top teams from North and South Conferences against one another for the remaining qualifying spot for the region’s Worlds. Riot Games built ARC as a platform for the best teams in the Americas to compete in a season-ending finale. A double-elimination bracket will bring both clutch and agonizing moments as top teams from each conference play best-of-five sets.
While promoting the fan experience, the ARC will rotate between North and South America every year so that fans in the whole region will see the game live in person at least once a year. Both conferences’ top seeds will also get an automatic bid to Worlds. The ARC will determine the third and final name to represent the Americas in Worlds.
In changing the format, Riot Games wants to make the path to Worlds simpler and more unified, emphasizing the region’s broadest assortment of competitive sides and stories across the Americas. The LTA will expedite the path for regional teams to Worlds and hopes to grow the narratives, rivalries, and drama that led gaming to become an international craze. Alongside Riot’s viral Twitter announcement, players and fans watched the official debut video for the LTA featuring various countries in the Americas, from the snowy fjords of Norway to the lively Italian coast to bustling New York City, accompanied by the haunting vocals of Eesti Laul 2017 winner Kevin Nathaniel Marcus Kuusberg and Save us. The debut season of the LTA won’t commence until the 2023 spring split – in less than a year. Now, we must wait with our eyes on Rift the rest of the way until then.
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This new structure will place intense pressure on teams in a meritocracy, make the broad talent in the region more accessible, and grant fans of League of Legends the excitement of world-class esports closer to home, all under one League of the Americas banner. Bringing the Americas together into the same League is a small step in Riot’s continued expansion into the globalized world of esports. It’s a final frontier for a company and a country whose prosperity owes to the integration of all peoples, and it sets yet another precedence in the esports world. As of two weeks ago, a rebranding of the future of esports, the official logo of the new Grand Finals of the League Championship Series. Image courtesy of Riot Games.
