Through their official Twitter account, Riot Games verified the absence of the first-seeded Southeast Asian squad Brian Esports. The reason for their absence is due to visa issues as confirmed by the League of Legends World Championship’s regional qualifier’s admin team.
With the absence of Bren Esports, we will now proceed with the 3rd and 4th seed winners – Sina OTC and HWA Gaming. They will now play for one spot in Group B alongside 1907 Fenerbahce, Team Liquid, and Infinity Esports. All four teams can still qualify for Worlds 2019, but only two will make it through.
The 2nd seed is still up for grabs. The team is VITALITY e-Sports. The team has two slots to play for in Group Stage #2 of the 2019 League of Legends World Championship, taking on Team Liquid and an opponent yet to be determined.
The 4th seed will compete with 09Vitality on October 24th at 20:00 CEST. If they are able to beat the North American squad, they will have another chance at qualifying for Worlds 2019 on October 25th against HWA Gaming, who already qualified through their win over Team Liquid at the regional qualifier finals.
The GE Tigers is the 5th seed in the European League of Legends Championship Series. They are the reigning World Champions after beating SK Telecom T1 in 2015.
To defend their title, they dropped support Lee “Lovy” Seung-min for Kang “GorillA” Beom-Hyeon. The move was met with mixed results. Some based it off their performance in international events, while some find it a smart move since Lovy was banned in Korea for Elo boosting. GorillA had a stellar career with SK Telecom T1, so his addition to GE Tigers was expected to help them get back on top of Europe and possibly earn another trip to Worlds.
