Reproduce the new MSI and WORLDS 2023 formats on Toornament

eSports

For the first time in a long time, Riot Games has decided to change the formats of the MSI and Worlds 2023 international competitions by introducing new structure types. We show you how to reproduce the new formats with Toornament.

Earlier in January, Riot Games published a long post to announce and explain the new formats that will be used in its two major international tournaments : the Mid-Season Invitational and the World Championship. Riot Games has made changes both in the number of participating teams and the structure of the formats with several objectives in mind:

  • creating more opportunities for best-of match play and cross-regional encounters
  • make sure that every single game in both tournaments is meaningful
  • minimize the number of games that do not impact the outcome of the tournament

Reproduce the Mid-Season Invitational 2023 format

For the Mid-Season Invitational tournament, the number of teams has increased from 11 to 13. Riot Games let go of the classic round-robin and single elimination bracket for a new format which consists of:

  1. a play-ins stage with 2 bracket groups of 4 teams. The top 3 teams from the play-ins qualify for the playoffs and join 5 remaining teams directly qualified for the playoffs
  2. the playoffs, played in a double elimination bracket

To faithfully reproduce the MSI 2023 on Toornament.com, we may create the following structure format and stages:

  1. a bracket groups stage with 2 groups of 4 teams each
  2. a single elimination bracket pitting the teams that emerged from the loser brackets of stage 1
  3. a double elimination bracket stage for the playoffs
The three stages created in the Toornament organizer dashboard.

Toornament.com natively offers the bracket group format in both single or double elimination. Combined to the “treshold” option, it allows you to reproduce perfectly the MSI 2023 play-ins stage.

The two bracket groups of the play-ins stage. The two winners (Team1 and 5) qualify directly for the playoffs, while the two losers (team 2 and 7) have to play a 3rd place match in a single elimination stage to go in the playoffs.

The playoffs use a classic double elimination bracket, one of the many structure type proposed by Toornament.

Check this demo competition on Toornament.com to see the MSI format in action: https://play.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/6397124267960745984/

Reproduce the World Championship 2023 format

For the Worlds 2023, Riot Games decided to go a step further when evolving its structure format compared to previous years. Indeed, they go down from 24 to 22 participating teams and replaced the classic round robin stage by the same Swiss stage system used by Counter-Strike:Global Offensive for its bi-annual Majors.

The overall Worlds 2023 format looks as follow:

  1. a play-ins stage almost similar to the MSI except that only two teams qualify for the next stage instead of three
  2. a Swiss stage of 5 rounds with 16 teams from which the 8 best qualify for the next stage
  3. a knock out stage of 8 teams in a single elimination bracket

The Swiss stage has the particularity that teams are eliminated or qualified progressively if they either lose 3 matches or win 3 matches. Thus, the Swiss stage doesn’t have the same number of matches in all of its rounds. From 8 matches during the 3 first rounds, it goes down to 6 and 3 matches for the 2 last rounds.

Hopefully, Toornament.com is also capable to reproduce this particular Swiss stage rule. In the organizer backoffice, once a round of your Swiss stage is finished, you can generate the next one and edit it to configure its exact number and list of matches thanks to the “Pairing” advanced option. With that, you can easily determine the number of matches needed, which can be inferior to the previous round.

List of the 3 matchup needed for the 5th round of the Swiss round stage.

In the end, to reproduce the Worlds 2023 format on Toornament.com, we need to create the following stages:

  1. a bracket groups stage composed of 2 bracket groups of 4 teams each
  2. a single elimination bracket stage to qualify 2 teams out of the 4 that emerged from the groups
  3. a Swiss round stage with 16 teams and 5 rounds to play
  4. a single elimination bracket stage with the 8 best teams from the Swiss round stage
The four stages created in the Toornament organizer dashboard.

Check this demo competition on Toornament.com to see the Worlds format in action: https://play.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/6397175906073993216/

Finally, for both tournaments, Riot Games also uses both Bo3 and Bo5 match formats. That is something that Toornament.com also handles perfectly, thanks to its Match Format configuration.

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