Earlier this month, Riot Games revealed plans to split broadcast duties of the top League of Legends league in Korea between OnGameNet (OGN), the long-time broadcaster of the affair, and SPOTV. But today, it claimed it made that announcement prematurely, reverting some of those plans.
OGN will in fact broadcast every single game of the 2016 Champion’s season. Riot apparently came to a new agreement with OGN after plenty of outrage from fans and employees of the company, which is one of Riot’s longest standing partners.
The new broadcast plan will maintain the status quo for the Spring season, with OGN handling all broadcasting duties. The Summer Split of Champions (LCK) will introduce a split broadcast, with two matches played in two different studios. Originally, OGN would cast one of those matches while SPOTV handled the other, but under this new plan, OGN will broadcast both sets (except for a few instances where schedules overlap), doing some of them alongside SPOTV.
The LCK playoffs and finals will be broadcast solely by OGN.
The changes come in large part due to the pushback from fans, who were angry and confused that Riot had decided to move half the league’s matches to a new broadcaster despite OGN producing what is generally considered the highest-quality broadcast in League of Legends.
Riot hopes that competition from SPOTV will continue to push OGN to deliver that top quality product, which it says is its primary goal for bringing in another broadcast partner. The company noted that it doesn’t collect broadcast rights fees and in fact will provide both companies financial support to produce top quality broadcasts.
Screengrab via Twitch/OGN
