LCK Looking at Online Matches as Part of its Contingency Plan

Since March 2nd, the LCK has been suspended due to the global pandemic COVID-19. The Korean League of Legends league had cancelled all matches due to health concerns. According to a statement given to invenglobal, Riot Korea is now looking at several options to commence play, including online matches.

“Although resuming LCK was not decided, we are checking out every possibility including online matches with considering how many matches left and how many days we might have."

Similarly, the Overwatch League had announced their contingency plan for their cancelled offline events in March and April, moving their competition online and increasing the number of matches played per week to catch up to their schedule. LPL, China's League of Legends league, had also chosen to play out their matches online.

Not tied down to a physical location to gather and the possibility to abide by social distancing measures, esports is in a unique position to still commence with its competition. Sports leagues around the world had either postponed or entirely cancelled their competition for the foreseeable future, while esports is in the unique position to be able to continue. 

League of Legends superstar and LCK competitior Faker had donated 30,000,000 KRW (approximately 25,000 USD) to South Korean non-profit organization "Community Chest of Korea" to assist the containment of COVID-19 in his home country. Having been one of the first countries with confirmed cases of COVID-19, South Korea has had a relatively tame number of cases with only 8162 reported ones so far, presumably because of their immediate containment strategies. 

Image via Riot Games.