EU Masters – League of Legends Skill Beyond Amateurs

The EU Masters tournament is an ongoing tournament series in League of Legends hosted by Riot games. Launching in Spring 2018, there are two iterations per year – a Spring and Summer event. Unlike other tournaments, EU Masters doesn’t consist entirely of pro teams – instead, semi-pro and amateur players compete.

You’ll still see some familiar team names though, as teams like Fnatic, G2, mousesports, Misfits and Ninjas in Pyjamas all field rosters in the competition. Naturally limited to European team, the players here are all from competitions at European Regional levels. EU Masters is a great place for LoL fans to spot new talent before they sign onto one of the ‘big’ pro teams!

The current EU Masters 2022 Summer Season begins on August 28th through September 25th. For the first time in three seasons, Karmine Corp will not be able to defend their trophy after being eliminated from the LPL.

Watch EU Masters 2022 Live:

EU Masters 2022 Format

In 2022, the European Masters is officially going into its eight and ninth iterations. 28 of the top teams in the region are participating after fighting through their respective national and regional leagues. Out of the lot, sixteen teams participate in the Play-ins, while the other 12 of them going straight to the Group Stage.

Certain regions will not have a team that can qualify directly to the main stage, and with that said, here are the EU Masters slots:

  • LFL: 2 Play-Ins, 2 Main Stage
  • Ultraliga: 2 Play-Ins, 2 Main Stage
  • Prime League: 1 Play-Ins, 2 Main Stage
  • Superliga: 1 Play-Ins, 2 Main Stage
  • NLC: 1 Play-Ins, 1 Main Stage
  • EBL: 1 Play-Ins, 1 Main Stage
  • PG Nationals: 1 Play-Ins, 1 Main Stage
  • GLL: 1 Play-Ins, 1 Main Stage
  • LPLOL: 2 Play-Ins
  • Hitpoint Masters: 2 Play-Ins
  • Elite Series: 2 Play-Ins

The Play-in itself is also split into two sections – first a smaller group stage, then the knockout stage. In the play-in group stage, the 16 participating teams are split into four double-round-robin groups, where matches in a best-of-one format. The top two from each of the groups continues straight to the Knockout stage.

In Knockouts, each group’s winner fighting another group’s runner-up, in a Bo3 format. Once again, the winner of each match advances to the group stage. In other words – one single match her decides whether or not teams are allowed to continue or not.

Following all this is the full group stage – the 12 teams that qualified directly and the 12 from the play-in are divided into 4 groups, competing in another double-round-robin. Matches are played in a Bo1, and the bottom team will be knocked out of each group, leaving just a few teams to advance to the play-offs. These play-offs are single-elim elimination, with the quarter and semifinals happening in a Bo3 format, and the Grand Final being a Bo5.

LoL EU Masters 2022 Betting

Betting markets are not yet available for the 2022 Summer EU Masters event. However, you can expect outright betting markets to open up during August for the main event. There should be plenty of outright esports betting odds available for your favorite player. Once odds become available, check in with our Esports News section for specific picks and predictions on a daily basis.

The EU Masters is always a big event for continental European League of Legends. Plenty of talent that plays at the event usually ends up in the main LEC rosters by end of season. EU Masters is also one of the bigger events for LoL Betting, on par with most regional leagues. Regional tournaments over the next few months are going to decide which teams are going to be contenders here.

Once, EU Masters kicks off, we will provide our full odds breakdown and power rankings for the 2022 Summer EU Masters event.

EU Masters Winners, Teams and History

EU Masters teams fight for the grand prize of €40k out of €150,000. More importantly teams and players fight for a shot to be noticed and scouted by the LEC franchised organizations.

While it’s been this way for some time, the first iteration of the EU Masters event had a slightly different setup – not only was the format different, but so were the participating teams. Additionally, there were fewer teams participating as well – the number of teams has been increasing steadily since then.

Of course, not everything has changed – there are even teams that have been part of the European Masters since the very first time – among them Misfits, BIG and Illuminar Gaming. No wonder there – Illuminar came in second in their first iteration of the EU Masters. Misfits won the 3rd version of the event, while Big won the 4th – Illuminar has yet to claim a win, despite having taken part since the beginning.

The nine EU Masters Champions thus far are:

  1. Origen 2018 Spring
  2. MAD Lions 2018 Summer
  3. Misfits Premier 2019 Spring
  4. BIG 2019 Summer
  5. LDLC OL 2020 Spring
  6. AGO Rogue 2020 Summer
  7. Karmine Corp 2021 Spring
  8. Karmine Corp 2021 Summer
  9. Karmine Corp 2022 Spring

If you are familiar with any of this organizations you would know that each of this winners gave the world some of the best League players right now. Crownshot, Nemesis and Selfmade all came out of the 2018 Mad Lions roster. Both LIDER and Neon came out of Misfits Premier, while BIG gave us Carzzy, Labrov and WhiteKnight. Finally, AGO Rogue produced us Zanzarah, Czekolad, Szygenda and the latest winner Karmine gave us former Fnatic toplaner Adam, while taking in LEC legends Rekkles and Cabochard.

All of this just points toward the level of talent in EU Masters as the proving grounds for the European League of Legends scene.