League of Legends NACL fearless draft explained

League of Legends North American Challengers League, or NACL, bewildered fans by introducing fearless draft. Now it’s going to be the new standard.

The fearless draft is the new and updated system that the NACL will use during champion select. The system is designed to make games more exciting by forcing pros to expand their hero pools. NACL will join China’s League of Legends Development League in implementing fearless draft with the goal of making lower-level League of Legends esports more fun for fans.

The fearless draft itself is simple, and it has the potential to revive Western esports viewership.

What exactly is the NACL fearless draft?

Fearless draft is a new draft system for NACL where teams can only choose champions it hasn’t played that match.

This means that, in a best-of-three match, game one has no bans. After that, teams can’t play any champion that it picked in game one. Then, if there’s a game three, each team has ten champions it can’t choose. There’s no issue with choosingchampions that the opposing team chose, which still gives teams a lot of freedom.

The NACL fearless draft takes away the ability to control what opposing teams don’t play. At first, some fans weren’t happy about the change. However, games are more chaotic as players are forced to play three differentchampions. It forces players to not rely on just one or two champions in the competitive space, which helps strengthen them as players.

How fearless draft could help League of Legends esports viewership

For the past few years, Riot has been changing different areas of the esports division to try to increase viewership, and fearless draft is one of its new tricks.

Unfortunately for Riot, League of Legends esports was falling off in the west during 2023. There wasn’t a clear reason why this was happening, but viewership numbers didn’t lie. While small changes have helped a bit, the fearless draft has the potential to shake things up. Games are going to be less predictable as pros can’t just stick to playing one or two champs. Of course, pros are pros for a reason, and they can excel on more than just one champion. However, not knowing how the opposing team plays on every champion gives every team a small boost.

Spectators generally enjoy the NACL fearless draft change, just like they did for the LDL. In fact, the fearless draft started with the 2024 Spring NACL. Now, the 2024 Summer Primer is using the system as well, and its likely here to stay.