League fans fear for LEC’s future as majority of staff laid off

Amid Riot’s recent layoffs, the LEC’s staff took a significant hit. It’s at the point where fans of Europe’s premier League of Legends circuit are worried the production won’t even be able to run for the next upcoming games.

The LEC (formerly EULCS) has long been Europe’s biggest LoL league, with the region fostering some of the best talent in the world, and the only Western team to win an international event beyond the first World Championship.

With KCorp joining the league in 2024, viewership has had some record-breaking highs. Regardless, Riot has chosen to lay off a great deal of their LEC staff in their recent cull of workers, to the point where many are concerned the production won’t even run.

Every position from systems engineers to observers, marketing, social media, talent management, & more has been hit. Sjokz herself warned that the production may be “bare bones” this weekend, and all signs point to disaster for the LEC.

LEC production hit by widespread Riot layoffs

Sjokz’s initial tweet sparked a lot of concern in the community, with her warning that a large number of people who were laid off were working on the LEC production.

A lot of people let go in Berlin were working on this LEC split and specifically the coming shows this week. Things will be a lot more bare bones/subdued than usual and emotionally quite challenging. Thanks for understanding.

— Eefje Depoortere (@sjokz) January 24, 2024

However, the full scope of the layoffs didn’t become clear until a list compiled by Twitter user btwbluwu showed how many folks were impacted.

The list included people who either announced on social media, or who contacted her to confirm their employment status.

Here is a list of known layoffs from the #LEC courtesy of the doc provided by @btwbluwu

Losing the executive producer, head of production, multiple engineers responsible for the back end, and 2/3 of the observer team is going to be rough.

At least 27 people on LEC gone. pic.twitter.com/o8kLeCKmIY

— MonteCristo (@MonteCristo) January 26, 2024

MonteCristo put together a list of all LEC staff affected and showed that the LEC lost everything from broadcast and systems engineers. The broadcast team is down to all but one observer according to claims from both Monte and Caedrel.

From what I can tell, #LEC production is going to be an absolute disaster this weekend

They fired all but one observer, so how will they do replays?

They fired their writers and producers, so how will they make segments?

They fired their engineers, so what if something breaks?

— MonteCristo (@MonteCristo) January 26, 2024

Considering the LEC was having some production issues in their brand new studio with the event fully staffed, it’s hard to say what things will look like with many of the people who aid production no longer working for Riot.

Additionally, many of the content team that creates skits around talent and players have been let go. Much of what makes the LEC stand out from other leagues comes from its video production team.

Oliver Wolff/Riot Games

French League caster and community pillar Chips commented on the situation, claiming that Riot have gone against their stated reasons for the layoffs in the first place.

“Riot was supposed to invest in esports, not massively cut into LEC skills. It has nothing to do with their press release,” Chips said.

For comparison, here’s an excerpt from Riot’s update regarding their goals with the layoffs and what they planned to focus on:

“Whether it’s the next hit from K/DA, the story unfolding in Arcane, the intensity of a TFT Open, the one-of-a-kind chills of a Worlds game 5, or the electric atmosphere of VAL Champs, our focus is on quality, impact, and unified experiences for players around the world.”

At the time of writing, the LEC is still planned to be broadcast from January 27-29 and beyond, but it remains to be seen if the show can really run to basic standards.