The Controversial Cheer Shirt for Worlds 2024 from LPL
Every year, Worlds attracts a lot of attention from League of Legends players as it is where many top teams compete for the world championship title. Therefore, each region has its own ways to support and cheer for their “favorite” teams fighting in this tournament. For LPL, this tournament usually creates special shirts specifically for Worlds with meaningful messages to cheer on the players.
And just before Worlds 2024, LPL also launched a new shirt with a similar purpose. However, this shirt immediately became the center of attention due to a highly controversial message printed on it. Specifically, the instructions printed on the inside of the shirt read, “If you lose, don’t worry too much.” This message has been criticized for significantly lowering the competitive spirit and enthusiasm of both players and fans by mentioning failure before Worlds 2024.
LPL Fans Extremely Outraged Over Worlds 2024 Shirt
Not stopping at the message, the price of this shirt also left fans feeling dissatisfied. Accordingly, the cheer shirt for Worlds 2024 from the LPL region is sold for 1999 CNY (about 7 million VND). This is considered an excessively high price for a jacket and has been heavily criticized by the gaming community. Many have bluntly stated that this shirt is “both ugly and expensive” and will not spend money to buy it.
In recent years, there has been a fun theory in the community that teams with black uniforms will win Worlds in odd years, while teams with white shirts will win in even years. This comes from the fact that teams like DWG (2020) and DRX (2022) both crowned champions when they had white uniforms. Meanwhile, EDG (2021) and T1 (2023) won the final with their signature black shirts. Perhaps this is the reason why LPL created the white cheer shirt for Worlds 2024 to aim for the “spiritual” factor in the upcoming tournament.
However, the design of this shirt is too simple, having only a few red borders combined with sponsor logos and team logos. Clearly, this overly simplistic “minimalist” design is not enough to convince many gamers to spend 1999 CNY (about 7 million VND) to buy the aforementioned product.
Furthermore, printing the phrase “If you lose, don’t worry too much” on this shirt is also a very puzzling decision from LPL. If they wanted to use the “spiritual” factor with the white shirt, they surely must know that mentioning the words “failure” or “losing” before a major tournament like Worlds 2024 is not advisable. Combined with the “sky-high” price, the LPL audience has even more reasons to criticize this shirt as soon as it was released.
The 2024 season can be said to be an extremely challenging time for the LPL region. From the decline in viewership for this tournament to the home loss of BLG at MSI 2024. And the “drama” related to the cheer shirt for Worlds 2024 mentioned above has continued to extend the unfortunate events in the LPL region. Perhaps if the LPL representatives continue to fail at Worlds 2024, this will likely become the “disastrous” season for this region.