LCS announces major sponsorship with Samsung, introduces Fast Five segment to its broadcast

Samsung is perhaps best known for its flagship product, the Samsung Galaxy smartphone series. For League of Legends fans, it’ll also be known for two things: the strength of its former professional League of Legends team, also named Samsung Galaxy, and now its unique partnership with the LCS. 

(Picture: Riot Games / Samsung)

Samsung -- described as a “global leader in Solid State Drives (SSDs) that take gaming experiences to the next level” -- is set to sponsor the LCS with their NVMe M.2 SSD models. Solid-state drives, storage devices used in computers that use flash-based memory, speed up computers significantly. Samsung is no stranger to the business, having held the leading position in global flash memory markets. Now, professional League of Legends athletes are set to use these SSDs for the world’s smoothest gaming experience on-stage. 

(Picture: Riot Games / Samsung)

The LCS will also introduce a segment on its broadcast called the Samsung SSD Fast Five, a segment displaying the speed at which top LCS players reach certain metrics and benchmarks.

They include fastest top laner to reach 100 CS, fastest jungler to hit level 6, and so on. It offers insight into how Riot, esports teams, and even the casual gamer can use specific metrics to judge players and their performance from a quantitative standpoint instead of relying on quantitative assessments.

• Read more: Sword temporarily departs Team Griffin following nepotism controversy and relegation

Some may consider the possibility of a type of sabermetrics being introduced in League of Legends to measure the quality of current esport athletes and players being prospectively considered for drafts at the NA Scouting Grounds. 

From some perspectives, it is an ironic narrative. Samsung Galaxy previously crushed NA’s best-known teams such as Cloud 9 and TSM and international competitions. Long-time followers will remember Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng infamously falling in less than a second to SSG Lee “Crown” Min-ho’s Viktor at the 2016 World Championship. 

Now, however, NA and Samsung will join together to provide LCS esports athletes with the best gaming experience possible. The real question, though, is whether it’ll be enough for NA teams to stand up to international competition.