All You Need To Know About The 2015 World Championship Group Stage

The League of Legends World Championship is the annual professional League of Legends world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games and is the culmination of each season. With Season 5 drawing to a close and each region putting forth their best, we’re ready to hit the world stage.

After breaking through the Playoffs, Regionals and the International Wild Card, the top 16 League teams from around the world are set to compete in the 2015 Worlds Championship.

The first round of competition kicks off with the Group Stage in October. Leading up to the Group Stage you can get a feel for each of the 16 teams competing in the 2015 World Championship, at the official website here.

Keep reading if you’re interested to know what the Group stage is all about, the Group Stage format, how Groups were chosen, and when you can catch all of the Worlds action.

The League of Legends Worlds 2015 Groups:

• Group A: Counter Logic Gaming, Flash Wolves, KOO Tigers, paiN Gaming
• Group B: Fnatic, Invictus Gaming, ahq e-Sports Club, Cloud9
• Group C: SKTelecom T1, H2K, Edward Gaming, Bangkok Titans
• Group D: LGD Gaming, KT Rolster, Team SoloMid, Origen

What Is The Group Stage Format?

The first wave of the 2015 World Championship tournament, mostly known as ‘Worlds’ starts with the Group Stage. For 2015, the Group Stage will be held in Paris, France over the course of two weeks, starting October 1.

The basic format of the Group Stage matches is always a Best of 1, double Round Robin. Each team in a Group plays all other teams in their Group twice.

Once this is done, the two teams with the best record from each Group will advance to the Knockout Stage of the 2015 World Championship, while the bottom two teams will be eliminated.

How Did They Get Sorted Into Groups?

The Teams were placed into their Groups by random weighted draw on the Group Draw show. You can catch a video of the Group Draw Show that was originally aired live.

The Group Draw follows a few rules, one rule is that teams from the same region can’t be in the same group. Also, not every region needed a team in each Group. For example, you could have a group with NA, EU, KR, and IWC, but not CN.

Teams were distributed into Groups by drawing them from three different pools based on the procedure illustrated below. This is supposed to give us a nice mix.

The teams were placed into pools based on their regional seeding.

• Pool 1: The No. 1 seeds from Korea, China, Europe, and North America
• Pool 2: The No. 2 and 3 seeds from Korea, China, the No. 2 seeds from Europe and North America, and the No. 1 and 2 seeds from the LMS.
• Pool 3: The No. 3 seeds from Europe and North America, and both seeds from the IWC Qualifiers.

What’s On The Line In The Group Stage?

In the Group Stage, teams are playing for placement into the Quarterfinals round of the Knockout Stage of the tournament. The top two teams from each Group will be placed in the Quarterfinals bracket based on their record within their Group.

Placement is important, as teams that finish No 1. in their group will play a team that finished No. 2 from another group.

Teams will also earn prize money based on their finish in the Group Stage. While every team gets something, the better they place, the more they get. You can check out prizing information here.

When Can I Watch The Group Stage?

The Group Stage will take place over two weeks in Paris, France.

• Date: October 1-4 and 8-11
• Location: Le Dock Pullman, batiment 137, 50 Avenue du Président Wilson, 93200 La Plaine Saint-Denis, France

Here is when you can tune in to Lolesports to watch the games live:

• October 1: 16:00 CEST / 7 AM PDT
• October 2: 16:00 CEST / 7 AM PDT
• October 3: 14:00 CEST / 5 AM PDT
• October 4: 14:00 CEST / 5 AM PDT
• October 8: 14:00 CEST / 5 AM PDT
• October 9: 14:00 CEST / 5 AM PDT
• October 10: 12:00 CEST / 3 AM PDT
• October 11: 10:00 CEST / 1 AM PDT

After the matches each day, you can stay tuned to the Lolesports broadcast for ‘Worlds Tonight’, a new 15-minute show that recaps the events of the day and gets you caught up to speed on the big takeaways.

Lolesports is also launching ‘PrimeTime League’, coming to you from Paris. Learn about the matchups, listen in on the Pros with Mic Check, and countdown the biggest plays of the 2015 Championship in The Penta!

How Can I Place Bets On Teams In The Group Stage

[adinserter block=”5″]

We recently took a Poll on what your thoughts were on Betting on eSports and it was overwhelmingly positive. So if you’re interested, WilliamHill (AU) is offering betting odds on the World Championship Group Stage through their website in the eSports section.

Here’s an example of some of the odds they have for each of the Group Stage matches. (Correct at time of writing but may change.)

As a promotion, William Hill is offering Non-Fiction Gaming fans a promotion to match any bet made so you should check it out here. (If you sign up it helps us here at Non-Fiction Gaming so bear that in mind.)

What If I Miss The Group Stage?

If you happen to miss any of the games live, the Lol website has a spoiler-free VODs archive where you can catch up on the matches. But, if you want to catch the entire show, they’ll also be rebroadcasting their live show at 4 PM PDT on match days.

You can catch those rebroadcasts at Lolesports.

Join Non-Fiction Gaming on Google+, Facebook and Twitter