by in
League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) have confirmed the group seeding for the season’s opening event, the LCK Cup 2025, which will begin on January 15, 2025.
The start of the 2025 LCK season is fast approaching, with just over a week left before the year’s first event, which will introduce a new system.
📣This coming January 15th marks the start of the 2025 #LCK CUP!
Here are the 2025 LCK CUP Group Battle team draft results! pic.twitter.com/BU7iaBoQXq
— LCK (@LCK) January 6, 2025
The 2025 LCK Cup is a three-phase event featuring all 10 Korean LoL esports teams, who will vie for a single ticket to First Stand 2025.
The new season-opening tournament was first revealed in October when it was also confirmed that last year’s top teams, Hanwha Life Esports and Gen.G, were seeded into separate groups: Group Baron and Group Elder.
The two teams selected teams from the remaining pool, with the selected teams then choosing the next team to join until each group had five. The results of the draft were revealed on Monday.
Group Baron
- OKSavingsBank BRION
- BNK FEARX
- DN Freecs
- Hanwha Life Esports
- T1
Group Elder
- Dplus KIA
- DRX
- Gen.G
- KT Rolster
- Nongshim RedForce
The tournament will utilise a unique format where the teams will play single-round robin best-of-three (Bo3) games against teams from the opposite group.
The group with the most wins will transform into a winner group and secure a better seeding for the final two phases of the event. The other will become the loser group.
The second stage (Play-In Stage) will welcome the bottom two teams from the winners group and the top four teams from the losers group.
The squads will be seeded into a double-elimination bracket based on their placement in the group stage and play a series of Bo3 fixtures. Final series are best-of-five (Bo5).
The top three teams proceed to double-elimination playoffs bracket, with all matches played as Bo5.
The full match schedule has yet to become available, but punters can find outright betting markets on all of the best League of Legends betting sites.
Last year’s most dominant team, Gen.G are billed as the favourite, priced at +125, ahead of the revamped Hanwha Life Esports squad at +200.
The reigning world champions, T1, are again expected to threaten the top spots but are given just a 22.2% probability to qualify for First Stand 2025 at +300.
Dplus KIA (+1000) and KT Rolster (+2000) are priced at double figures, suggesting that the battle for the inaugural LCK 2025 Cup will come down to just three squads.
