As Zimmerman acknowledged at the start of his address to the community, the LTA's debut split — both in the North and South — missed the mark for many fans. Despite the scene's struggles in recent years, Riot affirmed their commitment to
League of Legends esports in the Americas, attempting to put a positive spin on an otherwise dreary launch for the LTA.
After outlining the contrasting priorities in the Split 1 format that bogged down its success, Zimmerman directly addressed fan concerns, taking accountability for the two major communities — LCS and CBLOL — who felt sidelined in the new global LoL esports landscape.
Learnings from Split 1
The LTA's inaugural split, despite serving mostly as a kickoff tournament, felt too short — Disguised, for example, played only five games before being eliminated for two months. While Zimmerman promised that future Split 1s would be reworked to give teams more time on stage,
the global introduction of Fearless Draft required immediate adjustments starting with Split 2.
Originally designed to mirror past formats for a smoother transition, Split 2 was set to feature only Bo1 regular-season matches. To better integrate Fearless Draft, the first three weeks will now consist of Bo1s (the Positioning Phase), followed by a Bo3 Group Phase to seed the playoffs—akin to the LEC Split 1 format, but with Groups instead of Swiss.
Split 3, initially promoted around a "Pick and Play" format featuring a Swiss-style bracket where teams could select from higher-seeded opponents as they progressed, and will now shift to Bo5s in elimination matches. While First Stand was meant to be a global triumph for Fearless Draft, relatively few Tier 1 Bo5s have been played with the new draft restrictions. Adding seven more Bo5s in domestic play aims to bridge that gap.
Although every North American team complained of severe jet lag and a tight turnaround ahead of Cross-Conference play, all LTAS teams were defeated handily by LTAN representatives in the first playoffs round. To improve regional parity, the LTA will fly three LTAS teams to Los Angeles after Split 2 for an extended bootcamp against other non-MSI qualifying teams. LTA Commissioner Mark Zimmerman stated: "To be honest, the gap between NA, LATAM, and Brazil has existed for a long time, and closing it was never going to be a single split solution, but our vision was to achieve that over time."
Viewership and fan sentiment
While the LTA Cross-Conference stage attracted more viewers than the individual leagues it replaced (LCS, CBLOL, and LLA), overall viewership, especially during conference play, fell short of expectations. Zimmerman argued that Bo3s played a role, as fans tend to stay engaged longer throughout a full day of Bo1 matches than Bo3s. However, he primarily attributed the decline to scheduling conflicts.
Before the Cross-Conference stage, the LTAS and LEC broadcasts consistently overlapped with the first half of the LTAN broadcast — with considerable overlap in their fanbases, many viewers had to pick one to follow. As LTAN already had the smallest audiance, starting the North Conference's broadcast several hours into competing streams significantly hurt its numbers. Zimmerman pointed out, however, that by the time the competing timeslots were resolved — around halfway through the broadcast — viewership climbed quickly back to expected levels.
During Cross-Conference play, which was moved two hours earlier than initially planned, a similar overlap with the LEC made it difficult for costreamers to promote and for viewers to build interest in a far smaller product competing for attention. Moving forward, Riot aims to address these scheduling conflicts moving forward.
LTA Split 2 starts April 5th, with a Bo1-and-Bo3 Regular Season format to determine LTAN and LTAS seeds for MSI.
Header photo credit: LTA/Riot Games
