Rift Rivals 2019 preview

What is Rift Rivals 2019?

Rift Rivals (RR) 2019 is the final international League of Legends event before the World Championship (Worlds) in autumn. The Group Stage is held as a best-of-one (Bo1) Single Round Robin with the Finals as a best-of-five (Bo5) Relay race, whereby each team from a region plays at least once in the Bo5 Finals.

Rift Rivals 2019 odds

The odds below represent the head-to-head odds for Rift Rivals 2019. We have a dedicated section for Rift Rivals 2019 here.

An age-old rivalry: LCS vs LEC

After an exciting showing from G2 at MSI 2019, the Europeans arrive in North America to lay down the gauntlet at Rift Rivals to prove that their reign has just begun. On the opposite end of the spectrum, runners-up Team Liquid (TL) search for redemption at the event after a disappointing 3-0 defeat to G2 at the MSI 2019 Finals. Both teams are joined by their region’s Spring Split seed two and three, with Fnatic (FNC) and Origen (OG) representing the European LEC, and Cloud9 (C9) and Team SoloMid (TSM) representing the North American LCS.

Cloud9 and Team SoloMid look to rally at Rift Rivals, with a disappointing Summer Split performance for both teams so far.

This year’s RR has reached a fever pitch for fans of Western LoL as the teams arrive off the back of the most successful international event for Europe and North America since the beginning of the competitive circuit.

G2 are undoubtedly the favourites to come away from RR with the most wins at the event but a blazing-hot performance from fellow LEC competitors Fnatic from the beginning of the Summer Split seeks to raise the bar even further. Third seed OG have had struggles to find form in the LEC, and are considered the weakest out of the three teams representing Europe at RR. However, a silver lining does exist for the team in the form of their preeminent Top-Laner Barney ‘Alphari’ Morris who has been a leading force in his role. Other notable players to watch at RR from the LEC include Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther, Martin ’Rekkles’, Larsson and Tim ’Nemesis’ Lipovšek.

Europe looks to dominate at Rift Rivals with juggernaut G2 Esports as firm favourites at the event.

The regular season of the LCS has been at a stalemate for the opening weeks of the Summer Split, as TL hold a one-win lead in the standings above a four-way tie for second place. This tie includes C9 and TSM. None of the three LCS representatives have had a convincing performance so far, with each experiencing their own struggles in finding an in-game identity that could lead to success. This indecisiveness in the standings has made it difficult for analysts to characterise the region’s predicted performance at RR with much remaining in the unknown until game day. The three key players to watch at RR from the LCS are Jake “Xmithie” Puchero, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg and Eric ‘Licorice’ Ritchie.

Rift Rivals 2019 by the numbers

Whilst RR is considered a less serious event within the current LoL calendar, analysts will be looking over the data collected at the event as an indication of performance at Worlds in the autumn.

It will come as no surprise that G2 and TL are the two teams arriving at the event with the best performances from their respective regions so far with G2 claiming the lowest Average Game Time (AGT) at 26.8 minutes, along with the highest vision control score and most Kills per minute (KPM). TL claim the highest Gold Difference at 15 minutes (GD@15) with 1,649, Early Game Rating (EGR) at 70.7 and Dragon Control Rate (DRG%) at 66%.

Team Liquid look to get their revenge on G2 Esports at Rift Rivals following a loss at MSI 2019.

As mentioned in our How to improve your LoL predictions article, the GD@15 metric can prove particularly valuable when assessing the predicted performance of a team. TL’s high GD@15 and EGR indicates a strong probability that their champion draft and macro strategy will revolve around the first fifteen minutes of the game. In comparison, the same traits can be seen in G2’s statistics with their low AGT, high vision control score and KPM.

The shadow of Fnatic

Whilst we’ve mentioned G2 and TL multiple times so far, we’ve pegged FNC as the outsider that will surprise at RR. The squad travels to Los Angeles for their first international event since losing to Invictus Gaming (IG) at the Worlds 2018 Final and replacing their star Mid-Laner ‘Caps’ with ‘Nemesis’ in the subsequent Spring Split.

FNC has historically been the most successful team in the Western hemisphere at international events, however, the LEC squad will be particularly deadly at RR with an impressive performance in the Summer Split so far, one-upping G2 in Kill-to-Death ratio (K/D), First Blood percentage (FB%), First Turret percentage (FT%), EGR, Mid-Late Game Rating (MLR) and First Baron percentage (FBN%).

As we draw closer to the opening day of RR, which team will prove to be the best of the West? Catch the games live from the LCS Arena, Los Angeles on the 27 June.