LoL: Doublelift’s team Near Airport disbands, leaving the NACL

In March, NA LoL superstar Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng formed a team combining five huge names, and set out to take on the NACL. Now, only three months later, that team, Near Airport, is no more. In an announcement posted to the Near Airport youtube channel, the team announced that they’ve chosen to step down ahead of the upcoming NACL split and disband.

Four of these players, Doublelift included, were LCS veterans who’d won championship titles in the league. The last was Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni, a popular streamer in the scene. This structure was modelled after Marc “Caedrel” Lamont’s incredibly popular Los Ratones, a European team with a similar combo of veterans and a streamer. But while Los Ratones has amassed countless fans and quickly won titles of their own in the NLC and EMEA Masters, Near Airport has failed to materialize that kind of success.

The team qualified to the NACL, NA’s Tier 2 league, where they were expected to contest for the championship. Instead, they fell in fourth place to Conviction, and were left seemingly just to wait for next split. Now, we know next split won’t be coming for Near Airport.

The team had seen differences in priorities and direction between individual players. Eugene “Pobelter” Park had expressed frustration on stream with the lack of rigor in practice shown by the team. Meanwhile, players like Vincent “Biofrost” Wang are pursuing higher education full-time.

These differences were apparent in their announcement video, where Pobelter stated that the team “didn’t really practice a lot in Spring Split,” and contended that the team should either dedicate themselves wholly to playing, or not compete. With lives to live beyond pro play, Near Airport agreed to choose the latter.

While the team has stepped away from the NACL, Doublelift has stated future collaborations between the five players are possible. “The door is always open” said the AD Carry, for events like streamer tournaments or show matches. In the NACL, on the other hand, Near Airport’s exit leaves a third spot open for the promotion tournament, giving a chance for the veteran squad to potentially have their spot taken by some fresh talent.