I really hope that something like this may start to interest North American TV broadcasters...
If they can consider darts and poker a sport and show that on TV, why not League of Legends?

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am a different beard. And no dye in this badboy.

We do have a lot of epic beards here at Riot though.

There will not be an opportunity for singles to get into the championship without a team, but if a single is good enough I'm sure some good teams might come knockin' on their door.

You'll need to be part of a team in order to qualify for the Championship Series.

Good question

Personally, I'd love to be able to sit back and watch LoL eSports on TV. We'll see what happens!

Wait.

Only twice a year?

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, Riot. Your SEA publishers have a similar system in place - I've long suspected it was basically a testbed for exactly the competitive circuit you've just announced. But notice the rather massive problem in how the Garena Premier League is run: there isn't only no change in the roster at all, but it only takes a couple weeks to solidly establish that the lower-tier teams simply cannot compete at all.

After just two months, it had been solidly determined that the Bangkok Titans had not a chance in hell to get a single match in their favor, and that the rest of the GPL was there to basically fluff circuit points for the Taipei Assassins and the Singapore Sentinels, with the rest to scrabble madly like starved dogs for a meager, bone-bare third place.

That's not dramatic. That is, in fact, anti-drama.

Why not copy from the Seoul scene? Starcraft 2's Code A/Code S structure is well-designed for hype. "Easy" enough to be an up-and-comer Code A with potential, right? But Code S is where the prestige and money is, and the competition to just stay in it is cutthroat and ruthless. Up/down matches are intense nailbiter affairs - the emotional impact of each game is astounding.

Isn't that what you want? Isn't that the sort of self-perpetuating hype engine that makes the games worth watching? A twice-yearly relegation system, in comparison, is six months of stagnation, and only two times in a year where everybody is watching with riveted eyes and bated breathes for the final Nexus push.

You know how there are 10,000 ESPN channels? Riot should get together with ESPN about turning one of those channels into an E-sports channel :3

Hey, with enough pressure from the gaming community (not just LoL, but all the competitive scene) this could very well happen

I hate to be a broken record here but, ahem, Youtube has this functionality. Whereas good luck getting the current Twitch or own3d streams on an actual television successfully (I have done this before, by outputting my laptop via HDMI, though the resolution was by no means correct), pretty much any television or television set-top you buy nowadays will have a proper Youtube player.

Zero ESPN deals required, and this has decent market penetration into televisions already.

I got goosebumps

This is going to be good for avid spectators like myself Thanks Riot.