NA LCS Announces New Start Time

After much fan discussion regarding the current time slots for Day 2 of the NA LCS, Riot announced that starting with week 5, the Sunday games will now begin two hours earlier. In previous seasons, much effort was made by Riot to ensure that there was no overlap between the broadcast times of the European and North American League Championship Series.

In order to maintain this separation, the starting times of the NA LCS were pushed back by two hours, to start at 2pm Pacific. While there was no overlap with the EU LCS for the Sunday games, Riot believed that it was important to maintain continuity throughout the games, and so both days had their starting times adjusted.

Fan reaction to the new time slot was acceptable for the Saturday games, but many raised issues with Sunday’s game, citing an inability to watch the entire broadcast due to work and school commitments the next day. Riot has previously talked about the difficulty in maintaining viewer numbers throughout a broadcast, and so these changes are thought to help alleviate some of these concerns.

Fan reaction to the announcement of these changes has been mostly positive, with many fans not located on the West Coast now able to enjoy the games to the end despite differences in time zones.

For more on how fan criticism is getting results, check out our article on how the Overwatch League plans to make changes to their observation methods.