League of Legends: Wild Rift League (WRL) was introduced yesterday with a prize pool of five million Chinese Yuan ($787,000). It will begin March 19 and will decide which teams will represent China at the Global Championship Icons, Wild Rift's first world championship.
While this is a positive sign for Wild Rift esports in China, it's no surprise. LPL is a franchise league with 17 organizations. It is one of the most popular esports leagues in the world and has a long list of sponsors. For a new game, Wild Rift, teams will be more dependent on the prize pool for their wins.
WRL also has the largest prize pool of any regional Wild Rift league.
According to Liquipedia, the WRL will launch as an offline (LAN) event on March 19 at the WRL Stadium in Shanghai. After a long group stage, the playoffs will be held from April 28 to May 15 to crown the Chinese champion. The winner will advance to the Global Championship, which will take place in Europe this summer. The runners-up will take part in the Championship's preliminaries. The third to sixth placed teams will compete in the LCQ for two more places in the play-ins.
Twelve teams from different competitions compete in the WRL. These are the following teams:
- Edward Gaming
- FunPlus Phoenix
- J-Team
- JD Gaming
- KeepBest Gaming
- new sports
- Oh my God
- OneChamp
- Royal Never Give Up
- Team Weibo
- ThunderTalk Gaming
- WHG Esports
