by The 2022 Mid-Season Invitational will take place in Busan, South Korea, with 11 League of Legends teams participating in the 19-day event. The 11 teams that will battle it out for the US$250,000 prize pool – with the winner taking home US$75,000 – will be: DetonatioN FocusMe, Evil Geniuses, G2 Esports, Istanbul Wildcats, ORDER, PSG Talon, Red Canids, Royal Never Give Up, Saigon Buffalo, T1, and Team AZE.
This year’s MSI will feature three previous winners: 2018 and 2021 champions Royal Never Give Up; 2019 champions G2 Esports; and 2016 and 2017 champions T1. These three teams make up five of the six previous champions that have ever won MSI since its inaugural event in 2015. Therefore it is easy to see why the LoL bookmakers have these three teams at the top of betting. T1 will be the -175.44 favourite, followed by Royal Never Give Up as the +175 second favourite and G2 Esports as the +800 third favourite.
BEST BET – Royal Never Give Up
The LPL champions from China, Royal Never Give Up, are the best bet for us at www.century21cardinal.com. Royal Never Give Up finished their split as the second seed behind Victory Five, but RNG were by far the best team throughout the playoffs stage. The 2018 and 2021 MSI champions will be participating in this year’s event as the LPL representative for the fourth time in seven years and they will be hoping to be crowned champions for the third time.
The RNG roster that won the 2021 MSI will all return to this year’s edition minus Yuan “Cryin” Cheng-Wei who has since transferred teams and they have added Chen “Bin” Ze-Bin to the top-lane with Li “Xiaohu” Yuan-Hao moving to the mid-lane. RNG also have the reigning MSI MVP Chen “GALA” Wei who returns to the MSI in much different form than he arrived in last year after he won the LPL Spring 2021 MVP. RNG will play the MSI from China as the only team who will play remotely, due to the COVID-19 situation in China. If RNG can continue their great form after their 2022 LPL Spring win, they will be one of the hardest teams to beat in Busan.
Royal Never Give Up to win outright
BEST ROUGHIE – G2 Esports
The LEC champions G2 Esports had one of the more amazing runs through their split. G2 Esports finished their split as the fourth seed and then lost their first playoff series in the upper bracket. However, after that loss in the upper bracket G2 Esports did not lose a single series on their way to the LEC Spring Split grand-final. They took the grand final in dominant fashion 3-0 over Rogue, completing their run of four wins in a row where they did not lose a single map. The boys from the LEC will arrive at the MSI with a lot of confidence and will be looking to take out the title for the second time in four years.
