The Americas Cup Bootcamp Prize Means More to Some Than Others

Hello Everyone!

We're wrapping up a Riot Games-heavy two-week stretch here. I'll be heading out to the LCS Lock-In Finals on Saturday morning and will have coverage from the weekend on X, YouTube, The Sporting Tribune, and, of course, right here.

The last team standing in the qualifiers earns a spot in the opening international event — First Stand — in São Paulo, Brazil from March 16-22. But that isn't the only ticket to Brazil on the table. Second and third place in the LCS will also travel to compete in one of the final vestiges of the LTA: the Americas Cup.

Cloud 9 Kia and Sentinels have already clinched their spots, while either Team Liquid Alienware or LYON will join them. The three LCS qualifiers will meet LOUD, RED Canids, and FURIA — the top three teams from the Campeonato Brasileiro de League of Legends (CBLOL) — with the second- and third-place CBLOL finishers entering the Americas Cup tournament.

This is more than a glorified scrim on a stage. The winning region earns a Korea bootcamp in June, timed around Mid-Season Invitational.

But depending on which team you're on, that prize either changes everything or changes almost nothing.

Let's take a look.

Hope you enjoy the story!

— Paul

The 2025 season saw a bold cross-regional experiment called the League of the Americas (LTA). It never fully connected with fans, and by 2026, both regions returned to their 2024 structures. The Americas Cup is what remains — a choice by LCS Commissioner Mark "TheeMarkZ" Zimmerman to preserve the best of what the LTA produced.

"It's why we don't want to completely abandon everything about the Americas approach," Zimmerman said. "We're trying to roll forward the parts that we think do scale into the future, and that's one of them for sure."

For years, North America's chief rivalry was with Europe. South America existed on the periphery of that conversation. The LTA changed that, giving CBLOL teams a stage to compete directly with their northern neighbors — and they made the most of it.

For SuperBren, a CBLOL caster and community manager, the full LTA structure wasn't ideal. But what it produced was undeniable.

"I think the LTA Merger had a lot of ick to it, and not super successful, but the big thing it did bring us was that cross-regional competition," SuperBren said. "The fans loved that. It ignited a rivalry that wasn't necessarily there before."

North America dominated early, going 8-1 in cross-regional play during Split 1. But the CBLOL sides improved steadily throughout the year. By the Split 3 Regional Championship in Texas, Vivo Keyd Stars (VKS) had knocked off the now-defunct 100 Thieves 3-1 in the lower-bracket semifinal, while RED Canids took Shopify Rebellion to five games in the opening round.

"The cross conference made both regions better," said SuperBren, who was in Texas to witness it firsthand.

RandomMinionCaster, another CBLOL caster, shared a similar sentiment. He wasn't sold on the LTA as a format, but he's glad the Americas Cup survived — viewing it as the right balance between meaningful cross-regional competition and a standalone event that gives the first split some added weight.

"I love that there is still a connection between the two regions," he said. "Adds a little more stake to the first split that felt a little low stakes."

The pot of gold at the end of the competitive rainbow? A bootcamp in Korea. But depending on who's competing for it, that prize could be a difference-maker — or barely move the needle.

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Bootcamps matter. In traditional sports, road trips build chemistry. In League of Legends, a bootcamp abroad can be genuinely transformative — if the conditions are right.

Cloud9 Kia mid-laner Eain "APA" Stearns knows the variables better than most. He was candid about the limitations of a short bootcamp window, noting that jetlag, climbing the Korean ladder in solo queue, and uncertain scrim availability can chip away at the value quickly.

"I think the fastest I've ever done is like a six-day climb to Challenger on the Korea server, when I played all day every day," APA said. "You're not going to have the highest quality solo queue practice because you're going to have to play in the games at, like, Grandmaster. But if you can get really good scrims, it's really nice."

APA pointed to Cloud9 Kia's 20-day KeSPA bootcamp in December 2025 as the ideal model, which was long enough to climb the ladder to where quality solo queue games become available, and long enough to build real scrim chemistry with LCK-level opponents.

"That was like the perfect length of scrimming good teams and then being able to play enough solo queue to the point where you can get, towards the end, the good solo queue games," APA said.

A two-week bootcamp, by that standard, is a compressed version. For experienced, internationally-tested rosters like Cloud9 Kia, Team Liquid Alienware, and LYON, the ceiling of what they can extract from a shorter window is lower.

For CBLOL teams and Sentinels rookie mid-laner Isaac "DARKWINGS" Chou — who has spent his entire professional career in North America — it's different.

CBLOL has already been using bootcamps as development tools for teams that miss out on global events, and SuperBren believes the results have shown.

"CBLOL has felt really, really competitive among the top teams and no longer feels like one top dog is going to run it the whole time, since the other teams still get a chance to learn and grow even if they miss international," SuperBren said.

Even an imperfect bootcamp — scrims against LEC teams, solo queue at Grandmaster rather than Challenger — still represents exposure to a level and style of play that CBLOL teams rarely access. For Chou, it would be his first extended experience outside of the North American ecosystem entirely.

"Getting a feel for pseudo-international play, playing teams you don't already have tons of scrims and games against, it was really good," SuperBren said.

Most importantly, it gives every team in the bracket something real to play for.

"That trip to Korea gives the whole thing some stakes," SuperBren said.

If the bootcamp prize doesn't carry the same weight for the experienced LCS sides, something else has to fill that motivational space — and it does. The LTA didn't just produce competitive games.

FURIA pushed both of its play-in matches at MSI 2025 to five games. VKS finished second in the entire LTA, in a run that SuperBren described as "heads and tails above 100 Thieves." The gap that once felt vast has shrunk in a way that can no longer be dismissed.

"CBLOL expectations are probably high that RED Canids, FURIA, LOUD can do some damage to LCS teams," RandomMinionCaster said. "For NA teams, maybe it's a little pressure to reassert themselves."

Cloud 9 Kia, Team Liquid Alienware, and LYON don't need a bootcamp as motivation. They do need to answer a question the LTA raised and left open: is North America still the standard in this hemisphere? The Americas Cup is where that gets tested again.

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When it's all said and done, the Americas Cup isn't supposed to be an exhibition showcase. For one region, it's a golden opportunity for a region that has worked tirelessly to prove its worth on the international stage.

"Brazil is improving as a region and fast," SuperBren said. "We are very excited about what's going to come."

For the other, it's a chance to confirm what fans assume to be true: North America is still ahead of its southern brethren. But the question remains — will pride and a two-week Korean bootcamp be enough to get the North American teams to give full effort, or will they treat it as a throwaway?

Either way, São Paulo is ready. SuperBren called the venue in Brazil "one of the most wild esports venues in the world," and that tracks with everything we've seen from Brazilian fans.

The Americas Cup might not feel like a full-scale rivalry just yet, but if CBLOL has any say in it, North America will have to acknowledge the region sooner or later.

Special thanks to SuperBren and RandomMinionCaster for sharing their thoughts. Definitely check out their streams and coverage of CBLOL and the Americas Cup!

We're going to take a small break from Riot Games for the next few issues as we return to the Fighting Game Community. Next up? An exclusive interview with Arslan Ash, where we discuss his move to Japan and other topics. It's definitely not one to miss.

If you're not already subscribed, now's a great time — the FGC coverage coming up is some of my favorite work yet.

Thank you again for reading! Enjoy the games!

— Paul

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Riot Games.