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RFT.GG sat down with Chris Greeley, Global Head of LoL Esports at Riot Games, on the occasion of MSI 2026 in Daejeon, for a candid conversation about the closed league, the crowded calendar, tier 2, the LCS decline, and more.

• On Faker retiring: “Sure, who isn’t [scared]? He transcends the sport right now. He’s sat down with the prime minister and the president of Korea.” At the last Asian Games, conventional sport athletes lined up to take photos with him. “We’re not prepared for Faker to retire, and I don’t know that we ever will be. He’s the Michael Jordan of esports right now.” He hopes that Faker stays connected as an owner, coach or spokesperson. “No one is eclipsing Faker, and I don’t know that anyone will for some time.”

• On the closed league model: it worked in 2017 by giving teams stability, and the ERL system has been a genuine success: “half the current LEC teams were former ERL teams who bought into the LEC.” Riot admits mistakes in the LCS though: “We reduced the league from 10 to 8, then two more teams left. Knowing what we know now, maybe we’d go back and change some of those decisions.”

• On a potential full reset: “I don’t think so. But there’s a lot of room between where we are now and a total nuclear reset of the ecosystem.” The LEC road trip experiment is the kind of iteration they want to keep pushing.

• On the crowded calendar: the real issue is discoverability, not saturation. Riot pointed to third parties events like the Asian Invitational filling gaps well: “what you’re not watching is the number four LEC team against the number four LCP team. That stuff also has a place.” For top players though, vacation windows have shrunk. “The window for actual vacation has gotten pretty short if you make every international event.”

• On tier 2 lacking direction: global fix yet. “The overall issue with tier two is that it’s hard to attract money into that ecosystem.” Subsidizing everything isn’t the answer. Europe’s ERL works, North America’s promotion/relegation hasn’t.

• On the “right of selection” introduced this year: happy with it. “It’s added some strategic depth.” The philosophy is to avoid gimmicks: “What if you allowed someone to sub a player out mid-game? Part of that is like releasing a lion on stage to fight a player - it doesn’t necessarily increase the competition.” Coach comms is still being tested and hasn’t been thrown away.

• On the LCS decline: partly self-inflicted. “The LCS to LTA to LCS thing - I’ll get roasted online for it.” Big brands like TSM and CLG left. But the key insight: “Fans haven’t stopped watching - they’ve just stopped watching the LCS. They’re watching the LCK, the LPL, the LEC.” Greeley wants out of the doom loop: “People have been saying the LCS is dead since 2020, 2021 - and in those years our viewership was going up.”

• On constant format changes: it’s a balance between staying fresh and staying readable. Core MSI/Worlds formats haven’t changed since ~2023. He leaned on a sports analogy: “I’m an American baseball fan - they’ve changed the pitching mound, added pitch clocks. But that’s part of the fun of being a sports fan: who’s better?”

• On 2027 being “the year of change”: “There’s nothing coming in League esports in 2027 where you’re going to flip a table and say ‘whoa, they’ve changed everything.’ We’re definitely not aiming for that.”

The Rapid Fire Questions summed up :
Closed league in five years? Maybe.
Global promotion/relegation? Maybe.
Fearless draft here to stay? Probably.
Does the US market concern you? Always.
Unified format long term? No.
Optimistic about the next five years? “Yes, incredibly.”

TL;DR: Riot isn’t planning any “table-flip” reset for 2027. Faker retiring is something Riot admits it will never be ready for. The LCS decline is real but fans didn’t quit League - they migrated to LCK/LPL. Fearless draft is here to stay, coach comms is still being tested, and the calendar will keep getting more crowded. Greeley stays optimistic: “There’s never been a better time to be a League esports fan.”