Riot presents changes to the LEC 2021 season awards

The LEC player and team awards will see some changes for the 2021 LEC Spring Split and onwards. 

For every split, the LEC is giving out a handful of awards to the best-performing players and teams over the course of the season. Riot is intended to keep that tradition in 2021 but with some changes for the LEC rewards. From the 2021 LEC Spring Split and onward, the awards will be split into two groups. Some awards will fall into the “expert” category, while others will be given out in the “community” category. 

The goal is to “better highlight the best of the best” and give the fans of the LEC a bigger influence on the biggest award of them all, the All-Pro Team. In a recent update, Riot outlines a plan where the community will have full power to decide the All-Pro Team, which consists of the best LEC player for each position. The team is decided through a voting system that Riot will provide more information about in the near future. 

“The thought process behind this is to get you, the fans, even closer to making history happen,” Riot said. “We also want to specify that we are testing this out as a new process, we are open to receiving feedback.”

For the other awards, Riot will be giving their roundtable of experts the power to decide who will run with the Most Valuable Player, Rookie of the Season, and Coaching Team of the Season awards. Previously, the last-mentioned award has been dedicated to coaches but in 2021 Riot wants to acknowledge the whole organization behind a team.  

Fans are speaking against the new LEC award system

It didn’t take long before the League of Legends community brought Riot the first feedback to the new award system. Instantly, several fans and professional players agreed the fan-only vote for the All-Pro Team isn’t the way to go. The general worry is that it will only be a popularity contest, something that the award has already been suffering under in recent years. 

Since Riot is actively receiving feedback, it’s likely that the outrage from the community has already been heard. Only time will tell if Riot has time to make changes to the format before the end of the spring split. If not, the split will likely help decide if it really is a popularity contest or if fans are objective in their voting. 

Expect the vote to open within the next weeks, as the 2021 LEC Spring Split is already entering the sixth week of the regular season. 

Which teams are playing in the LEC 2021?

The 10 LEC teams haven’t changed for 2021, except for Origen who is now playing under the Astralis banner. 

The 2021 LEC participants are: 

• G2 Esports
• Fnatic
• MAD Lions
• Rogue
• Misfits Gaming
• SK Gaming
• Vitality
• Schalke 04
• Excel Esports
• Astralis

Who won LEC 2020?

Both splits of LEC in 2020 were won by G2 Esports. The King of Europe had some cracks in the armor throughout the season but ended up performing when it mattered the most. In fact, G2 managed to win both finals in a 3-0 fashion against Fnatic.