1) The world championship for League of Legends 2017 will be played in a total of 4 locations across china, beginning from september 23rd and concluding on november 4th. The participants will each be fighting for their share of the $2,130,000 prize pool. That’s right, over 2 million dollars. 1 Million dollars for first place, 250k for Second, 100k for third, and that doesn't even count the money that will build up from fans supporting the tournament, via in game purchases and ticket sales. Last year the fans added over 2 million to the pot.
2) There will be 24 teams from 14 regions, with some regions getting 3 teams to represent them (South Korea, China, North America, Europe and Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau) and all other regions only getting one team to represent them. (Brazil, Latin America North, Latin America South, Japan, Oceania, Turkey, Southeast Asia and CIS/Russia) If you are doing the math, there is one more team missing and that final team is the Wildcard team that placed highest during the mid season invitational. That team is GPL, who placed 5th-6th at MSI.
3) Koreans have won the last 4 years in a row. It’s normal for koreans to lead the pack at international events, but they can’t keep taking first forever. Will another region be able to take down the likes of SKT or the Samsungs? The western regions get more bloodthirsty and confident every year despite loss after loss.
4) This worlds tournament has been expanded from last year: There are 8 more teams competing this year for a total of 24, compared to only 16 teams competing in 2016. The stakes are higher than ever!
5) The three Korean seeds will not participate in the Play-In Stage and will be auto-seeded into the Group Stage. Riot has felt that korea has earned all the byes because of their dominance in the last two years, and will skip the play-in stage entirely. This means less opportunities for them to lose, but they will have less time to settle into a tournament meta this time around.
