Just before the scheduled playoff match between Edward Gaming and Weibo Gaming, the official League of Legends Pro League twitter announced that due to the surging number of COVID-19 cases in China, the LPL 2022 spring playoffs would be pushed back. On top of that, the games would also be played remotely.
“Due to the current Covid situation, to protect the health and safety of our players, coaches, team personnel and staff, we have decided to postpone the original playoffs schedule until April 8th and onwards,” the official announcement said.
The same announcement said the time and date of the LPL 2022 spring finals would be announced at a later date and encouraged fans to stay tuned for details. Despite the announcement, though the EDG and WBG match went on as scheduled, remotely. Additionally, the next two matches are also not affected by the postponement.
The actual matches affected by this announcement are the Round 3 matchups and beyond. Those matches were originally planned to start on Friday, but they will now start a week later on April 8.
This means LNG Esports will still play against Top Esports on Wednesday and JDG will take on WBG the day after, on Thursday. The bright light in this scenario is the week delay will give teams ample time to prepare for their opponents, especially with the new 12.6 patch releasing soon.
China has been dealing with a major COVID-19 outbreak in recent weeks. In fact, matches dating back to the regular season had been postponed due to the outbreak. Oh My God! had two of their matches postponed from Week 8 and Week 9 due to Shangai’s quarantine regulations. Anyone’s Legend’s match against Victory Five was also postponed in Week 8 due to safety reasons.
This new announcement comes after China announced that Shanghai will be implementing another lockdown to control the new outbreak.
