LCS teams recently asked to remove the mandate to field a team for the North American Challengers League (NACL) beginning with Summer 2023 in an effort to unlock more operational and financial flexibility. After reviewing their proposal, we’ve agreed to their request in this case to support the continued, long-term success of the teams and the professional esports ecosystem in North America.
We remain committed to evolving the NA talent development pipeline. We’ve been regularly taking steps to open opportunities for the thriving grassroots community through Proving Grounds Circuit in 2021, and the introduction of NACL Provisional Teams and the NACL Promotion Tournament this year. Our work here isn’t done, and we will continue throughout this season and beyond.
There has been a lot of speculation so we want to clarify three things:
**1. The NACL will be operational for Summer 2023 and beyond**
As we move into Summer 2023, we will make adjustments to the NACL format to ensure we provide a competitive system for teams:
- We’re implementing a true promotion/relegation system for NACL, where all NACL teams are eligible for relegation.
- We’re making the NACL more geographically accessible by utilizing the Chicago server for competition.
- We're making a commitment to long-term sustainability. This summer, we will immediately implement mechanisms like Twitch subscriptions and team partner broadcast integrations mirroring the LCS.
**2. We’re expanding competitive opportunities for the NA developmental system by delivering cross-region competition for the Americas as early as 2024**
Based on the success of other regional developmental tournaments and leagues in EMEA and APAC, we’re excited to explore what cross-regional competition can look like in the Americas region which includes North America, Latin America, and Brazil. We’ll share more about this initiative as we lock in more details.
**3. The LCS import rules are not changing**
While we may redesign our developmental systems or evolve the Path to Pro in the future, there are no changes in the works around the current import policies for the LCS.
The NACL will look a bit different this Summer, and we’ll share a more detailed overview of the format, teams, and schedule as soon as possible. We’ll work with LCS teams to ensure that they have strong avenues to scout players even if they are not involved in the NA developmental ecosystem directly. We’ll also continue to take steps to evolve our developmental ecosystem to ensure the systems and structures in place support the aspirations of potential pro players by helping them grow, building their brands, sharing their stories, creating opportunities to be scouted, and finding a path to the next level of play.
*Raul Fernandez is the Head of Esports for the Americas region. He oversees all esports operations in North America, Latin America, and Brazil.*
