During a recent live stream, G2 Esports bot laner Luka “Perkz” Perković shared his opinions on the upcoming Rift Rivals tournament he is set to compete in, and it’s fair to say that he’s not excited about it.
“Honestly, I could not care any less about Rift Rivals,” Perkz said. “I don’t really think the tournament has [a] place in such stacked season already. I think Riot should remove Rift Rivals. And the fact that we actually have to fly to NA is like even worse… We already fly so much.”
Perkz’s lack of interest in Rift Rivals is hardly surprising when you look at what else he and the rest of the G2 squad have going on. They’ve just returned from winning the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational, which was held in Vietnam and Taiwan. They now have three weeks to prepare for the start of the LEC Summer Split. If they choose to use that time to prepare, that means they will have had almost no time off since the start of play in the spring.
Once the summer split kicks off they will be back to playing matches every week in Berlin, but after just three weeks of games they will have to jet off once again, this time to Los Angeles in order to play the Rift Rivals tournament at the LCS studio. With the tournament set to take place between July 27 and 29, they will then have just a few days to fly back to Berlin in order to play their next matches in the LEC.
That certainly is a packed schedule, especially compared to the other LEC teams. Some of those teams haven’t had to play a competitive match since the end of the spring split regular season that wound down in March. And with Rift Rivals simply being a tournament to decide which region is playing better between NA and EU, lacking in prize money or any real significance beyond bragging rights, you can see why players wouldn’t be particularly bothered about playing in it.
There is little chance that Riot will make any changes to the upcoming Rift Rivals event, but many people in the scene have questioned its timing and place in the annual League of Legends esports calendar of late, so it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if Rift Rivals saw changes heading into 2020.
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