The KeSPA Cup, an off-season Korean League of Legends tournament organised by Korea’s esports governing body (KeSPA), is returning after a three-year hiatus.
The new 12-team KeSPA cup features the 10 League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) organisations as well as Vietnam and Chinese Taipei all-star rosters.
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According to a translated release, the 2024 iteration will take place from November 30th to December 8th and will feature both online and offline play.
An opening group stage will see the 12 sides split into two groups, both completing a best-of-one single round-robin. The top four from each then form an eight-team Swiss-style group to determine the four bracket stage participants.
The singe-elimination bracket’s semi-finals will be played through best-of-three series while the grand final will be a best-of-five. The bracket stage will be held at the 400-capacity V.SPACE esports arena in Seoul, South Korea.
The cup will host an English to be broadcast on YouTube and Naver CHZZK, a live-streaming platform launched earlier this year following Twitch’s closure in South Korea. The tournament will include a prize pool of ₩80m (~£44,300).
As per the release, rosters are to be compiled and announced ‘as late as possible’ as the tournament takes place during the League of Legends free-agency period. As has been the case in previous KeSPA cups, this will likely lead to some teams fielding weakened rosters featuring academy players.
Interestingly, the tournament aims to ‘transform from a pro-am tournament to a national team selection criteria review tournament’ according to the release, hoping to aid in selecting national team rosters.
Sponsors for the cup include telecommunications provider SK Telecom, hardware and peripherals manufacturer Logitech G, beer brand CASS, healthcare cosmetics company PowerfulX, and streaming platform Naver CHZZK.
Organised by the Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA), this will be the first KeSPA cup held since 2021. Previous iterations of the tournament saw a range of teams competing from the LCK, LCK Challengers League (Korea’s tier-two academy league), and the amateur KeSPA-run KeG Championship.
