North American Challenger squads belonging to an organization competing in the North American League of Legends Championship Series are no longer eligible to compete in the Promotion Tournament.

Riot Games' senior esports coordinator and product owner for the NA Challenger Series, J.T. "Tiza" Vandenbree, announced the news via Twitter as the North American Challenger Series' Open Qualifier looms on Thursday.

Also worth noting- as of this year, LCS sister teams are not allowed to participate in Promotion. The incentive to "farm" a CS spot is gone. — J.T. Vandenbree (@RiotTiza) December 1, 2016

Vandenbree also clarified in a subsequent tweet that, should Challenger squads belonging to an LCS organization position within the top two, their spot would be allocated to the next eligible squad.

Since lots are asking - if a sister team takes top 2, we will take the next highest-finishing CS team. — J.T. Vandenbree (@RiotTiza) December 1, 2016

The move effectively bars teams from developing Challenger teams specifically with the intent to sell them should they qualify to the LCS, a controversial strategy. The practice had existed since the end of 2014 when Team Curse Academy qualified to the LCS and was subsequently sold to the owners of Gravity Gaming for approximately $1 million.

In the 2016 summer season, Cloud9 Challenger and Team Liquid Academy qualified to the promotion tournament, and C9C qualified to the LCS, whereas TLA nearly relegated Echo Fox (losing 3-2 to the LCS team). C9C's future is still unclear, although Cloud9 has to sell the spot because of the existing rule that organizations may only have one team in the LCS.

The new rule only applies to the North American circuit at this time, and it is unclear whether Europe is to follow suit. "I can only confirm that NA is doing this. EU makes their own choice on this," Vandenbree noted.