The League of Legends European Championship (LEC) will be played in front of a live audience for the first time in two years.
The LEC Spring Finals 2022 is still scheduled to take place at the LEC studio in Berlin, with a limited amount of tickets being made available for fans.
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The finals, set to take place in April 2022, will welcome attendees, but Riot Games did not disclose how many people will actually be able to attend the event. This is partly due to COVID-19 restrictions and the size of the venue, which is designed as a broadcast studio with limited audience space.
The LEC explained in a release: “Although local COVID regulations are easing, we are still conscious about maintaining safety as we begin to return to normal operations – and this is not a regular studio show. Safety is still our number one priority, so we are taking small, incremental steps to ensure that the reintegration of our much-missed audience happens as smoothly as possible.”
The last in-person event for the LEC was the LEC Summer Finals in August and September of 2019. Ever since then LEC games were played either fully online or from the aforementioned Berlin studio, which also hosted other League of Legends broadcasts during the pandemic.
Interestingly, the LCS Spring Playoffs are also set to be played in front of a live audience as well, with the playoffs being held at the LCS Studio in Santa Monica, California, and the grand final scheduled to take place at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas.
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The opening of the studio is a ‘cautious step in the right direction’, according to Riot Games. All attendees will receive food and drinks along with the ticket, and the LEC noted that all regulations and rules regarding the events are subject to change, considering the development of the COVID-19 protocols in Germany.
The tickets for the event will be available on April 1st, at 16:00 CEST.
Esports Insider says: The LEC Studio in Berlin simply can not hold a large number of people in the audience, so the event will really only be open to a very lucky few. Still, it’s refreshing to see that the LEC is thinking about going back to real-world events, as small as they might be.