Riot Games announces the 10 teams competing in its top European League of Legends competition. Fnatic, G2 Esports, Misfits, Schalke 04, Splyce, and Team Vitality will all retain their spots, for an €8M ($9.2M) fee.

The outside partners, which will pay €10.5M ($12M) to enter the league, are exceL Esports, Origen, SK Gaming, and North American team organization Rogue.

The league will be renamed the League of Legends European Championship, and feature an all-new logo and branding.

Riot Games has revealed both the teams and new name for its top-tier League of Legends circuit. The European League of Legends Championship (LEC), previously known as the European League of Legends Championship Series (EU LCS), will begin its next season on Jan 18. 2019. The 10 new long term-partners will collectively pay €90M (approx. $106M) to acquire their spots.

Six team organizations will remain from the previous competitive year: Fnatic , G2 Esports , Misfits , Schalke 04 , Splyce , and Team Vitality . Each will be required to pay €8M ($9.2M) as an entry fee, but unlike the previous season, they will enter a new league model that includes revenue sharing, minimum player salary increases (from €24K to €60K annually), and infrastructure investments like player development and representation.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The LEC redesign was a collaboration with DesignStudio, which created the current Premier League logo.[/perfectpullquote]

“Being a commercial partner, instead of having that kind relationship in the past where Riot decided, and teams had to follow through, that was not very healthy,” said Nicolas Maurer, CEO of Team Vitality. “Working directly with Riot is a welcome change. From a team owner and communication perspective, it creates an environment where we work together for the same goals. Even if we compete on the field, or in different games.”

While UK organization exceL Esports is entirely new to the competition, Origen and SK Gaming both competed in earlier seasons. ReKT Global, under its team brand Rogue, joins the league as the third North American majority-owned organization, next to Misfits and Splyce.

Alongside ReKTGlobal , investors in Rogue include DJ Steve Aoki and members and management of the band Imagine Dragons. “Rogue has this philosophy of working with celebrities, music icons, and influencers, and I think it’s important for players to build their own individual brands,” said Anna Baumann, a German legal counsel who will lead the team as managing director. “This means becoming celebrities in the esports space, so after their career players have bigger opportunities to move forward.”

RFRSH Entertainment , a Danish esports company, chose not to use its Astralis team brand, which has only ever competed in Counter-Strike . Instead, the company purchased a majority stake in Origen, with founder and former pro-player Enrique “xPeke” Martinez maintaining a minority share. “We have a strong legal and financial base, and xPeke is going to be taking care of the fans, and in many ways being the face of the team,” RFRSH Entertainment co-founder Jakob Lund Kristensen told The Esports Observer.

Kristensen also said that Origen would share the same operational staff, including communication and PR, as its sister team. “They will actually be living and practicing in Copenhagen, next to Astralis, and they will be flying to Berlin every weekend.”

The LEC redesign was a collaboration with DesignStudio, known for creating the current English Premier League logo and the brand around the UEFA Champions League. “Obviously the branding is big for us, the name change, the new marks. We are also currently working on the studio, so we hope to have a very cool, revamped design for everyone once we go live in January,” Remer Rietkerk, senior league management associate told The Esports Observer.

Marc Schnell, head of EU league management, confirmed that in place of academy teams, all the long-term partners would be able to field secondary teams in the 13 regional competitions in European League of Legends. “When it comes to how that distribution is going to look like, we’re going to have to wait a bit till those leagues are ready,” he said. “But we’re certainly looking forward to all the LEC teams fielding secondary squads in those competitions.”

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Riot is in talks with new long-term commercial partners – to be announced soon.[/perfectpullquote]

SK Gaming , which has been competing in the LoL Premier Tour in the DACH region, will field a separate roster for the LEC, and continue developing its tier-two team. The organization’s managing director, Alexander Müller, said its Berlin team would train in a newly rented facility in Berlin, while the second tier squad would train in a facility opened in partnership with F.C. Cologne.

“Our strategy, when we announced our partnership with Deutsche Telekom, was to keep that German-based team, and to develop those boys into a top-four contender in 2018,” Müller said. “We want to develop them into a squad that can make it into the European Masters.”

Riot also confirmed that the competitive structure would remain largely the same for 2019, minus a few adjustments to the play-off phase. The company is also in talks with new long-term commercial partners – to be announced soon.

Schnell could not say anything specific regarding the contract lengths with the team partners, but emphasized that Riot was not looking to cycle teams out of the competition. “The goal here is to work with these 10 teams, and possibly any more that we add, in the long term,” he said. “ We’re going to be working with them, as far as we’re concerned, for the indefinite future.”