Riot Games announced Saturday the cancellation of the League of Legends US Championship Series matches at the Prudential Centre in Newark, New Jersey. This was due to COVID-19 cases. All current ticket holders will receive full refunds.The LCS Championship was scheduled as a roadshow with fans. Riot Games announced that the promising roll-out COVID-19 vaccine in Spring had prompted Riot Games to make the decision to go ahead. Riot Games also stated that it was monitoring the increase in cases. We cannot conduct a large fan event due to the current situation. After much thought, we have decided to move the LCS Championship event to the LCS Arena.Riot Games spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that no tickets would be sold for the event and also stated in an email on Saturday that it wouldn't have a live audience at the new venue.The league switched to an all-virtual format during the coronavirus pandemic. Players compete online. The league moved the spring championship event to the in-person format, with the final two matches of April Midseason Showdown at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. However, there was no live audience. For most of the summer, players played in-person at LCS Arena without fans. However, due to positive COVID testing associated with Immortals and an unknown team, they returned to remote play in July.Chris Greeley is Riot Games' head of esports in North America and Oceania. He also spoke out to The Verge in July, saying that although the league did not have a backup plan for COVID cases, it was prepared to make adjustments if needed. He said that there is no pandemic plan, making it difficult to begin to create those contingency plans because there aren't known variables.Riot announced in its announcement that Riot hoped to reunite the fans at a celebration of this game. We have had to postpone this reunion due to the rapid spread and persistence of the COVID-19 Delta variant. We believe our fans deserve a top-quality LCS experience that is full of joy, connectivity, and excitement. After assessing all the risks, we found that no protocol or plan allowed us to deliver the event without putting at risk the health of our staff, fans, and teams.Update August 7, 2014 at 4:19 PM ET: Comment from Riot Games spokesperson
