KeSPA shortens tryouts for Team Korea's LoL roster, answers to criticism about their selection process

On Apr 20, KeSPA [Korea e-Sports Association] announced that they’ve shortened their tryout period, and that the players will be returning home later tonight. Furthermore, through the Q&A style statements they provided via their official social media, they’ve answered to some of the criticism they've received with regards to the selection process for Team Korea's LoL roster.

First, the reason why the player selection process was delayed was due to the changes to AESF [Asian Electronic Sports Federation]’s schedule. Because AESF’s due date to submit the final roster has been changed, KeSPA had to request to the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee to change the date they submitted their 10 candidate roster. Thus, the due date changed from early April to late April, and tryouts took place in April.

They’ve also explained why they announced the 10 player candidates. KeSPA wanted to ensure clarity and fairness in their selection process, and in order to do so, they selected the 10 players to provide them with an opportunity to prove themselves in actual practice, and also to diversify the evaluation categories with the ultimate goal of creating the best roster possible, hence the tryouts and the camp in Gwangju.

On why KeSPA didn’t reveal the list of their subcommittee members, they said “We wanted to prevent any possible improper solicitation and external pressure, so we decided to reveal the members after the roster’s been finalized. With regards to the player selection schedule, we immediately started talking about the schedule with the LCK teams after we picked who’d lead the team, and held a presentation about our plans with all the teams on Apr 4.”

All five starting members of T1 have all made KeSPA’s candidate list. Due to such, they have a very hectic schedule with no time to properly rest since their win in the LCK Spring finals, since MSI 2022 will be taking place in May. For T1, the April tryouts definitely put a strain on the players’ schedules. KeSPA explained that they couldn’t wait until after MSI to submit the final roster, and April was the only available month in the 2022 yearly schedule.

KeSPA provided a counter statement to the criticism of how the tryouts were hastily prepared. “The first time we started talking with Riot Korea was in January, and our kickoff meeting with the person in charge at the Gwangju Esports Arena was in late January. We’ve officially started preparing for the tryouts in early March, which is when we got the confirmation from Riot Games. The claim that there was no negotiation with one of the teams for the exhibition is also not true. KeSPA had a discussion with the arbiter on the team, and received an answer from them.”

Lastly, they provided the reason why they chose Gwangju for the tryouts. When scouting different arenas, Gwangju Esports Arena was the first place that they started consulting first, as it was the arena that had the proper space for the players to train and had the most number of seats for spectators. The negotiations went very well, so they decided on Gwangju without consulting any other arenas in different regions.

KeSPA lastly stated, “In comparison to when esports was just a demonstration event in the 2018 Asian Games, the importance of this year’s Asian Games is night and day. We’re trying to proceed in a fair manner by applying many experts’ opinions and to be in accordance with the regulations of the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee. We’d like to apologize to the fans that looked forward to watching the exhibition match, and we’ll make sure to be more careful and fair in finalizing Team Korea’s roster. We will not forget to continue communicating in our process. Thank you.”

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