MAD Lions could win the LEC with a negative winrate

Two-time LEC champions MAD Lions could actually go on to win the Spring title with an overall negative win/loss record.

Due to the double-elimination structure of both the group stage and playoffs, each remaining team will be able to win the split with a minimum of 10 more wins and a maximum of nine more losses. For MAD, who already carry over a negative winrate, this means that they could eventually end up champions with fewer wins than losses across the entire split.

Eighth-place MAD Lions scraped through the first stage of Spring with only four wins, one of which being a tiebreaker victory against Team Heretics to secure qualification. Going on and winning the league the “worst” way, or in other words, the journey with the least wins and most losses, would leave the MAD for an overall 14-15 record (13-15 if not counting their tiebreaker match).

The 10-win, nine-loss journey would come to fruition if a team wins both opening group stage series 2-1 – booking them a place in the upper bracket of the playoffs. Then, an immediate 0-3 loss would move them to the lower bracket, where subsequent 3-2 victories would clinch the LEC title with an overall 10-9 record across the two stages and, in MAD’s case, 14 wins and 15 losses across the whole spit.

FlyQuest analyst discovers strange MAD Lions LEC outcome

Analyst Lorcan “Lorcz” Elliott, who currently works for FlyQuest’s academy side FLY Challengers while they compete in the NACL, was the first to notice the strange technicality, explaining his findings about MAD Lions on Twitter.

With the current LEC format (top 8 going to groups) it's possible for MAD/KOI/SK/FNC to win LEC with an overall negative Win-Loss?

E.g. MAD:
Regular season 3-6
Wins group matches 2-1 each -> 7-8
0-3 in first playoffs match, in to 2×3-2 wins -> 13-15 overall record and win LEC

— Lorcan (@LorCanDoIt) March 29, 2023

He also brought up KOI, SK Gaming, and Fnatic as others who qualified for the group stage with negative records — each currently with four wins and five losses. Though these sides can’t win the split with an overall negative winrate, they can still go even by following the “worst” path which would leave the eventual champions with 14 wins and 14 losses.