Psyonix adds $250,000 to RLCS regionals after cancelling World Championship

The recently-cancelled Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) Season 9 World Championship event will not be rescheduled or replaced, Psyonix has announced.

Instead of having an overall champion for the current season, Psyonix will add a total of $250,000 (£190,253.75) to the prize pools for the four online regional championships.

The RLCS Season 9 World Championship, which was scheduled to take place outside of Dallas from April 24-26th, was cancelled late last week in the wake of rising fears over the global spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Psyonix said at the time that it would evaluate all options for making up the World Championship matches, and also announced that the rest of the season’s broadcasts would be done online with remote commentators rather than in-studio.

RELATED: RLCS Season 9 World Championship set for Dallas

On Saturday, Psyonix announced that it will end Season 9 with the respective regional championship events due to the uncertainty of being able to hold a global event for the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, the 12 teams that would have qualified for the World Championship will now take home a share of the additional regional championship prizing. North America and Europe’s top four teams will each benefit from a respective $100,000 (£76,101.50) regional boost, while the top two team teams each from Oceania and South America will share a respective $25,000 (£19,025.38) in additional prize money per region.

RELATED: Coronavirus puts much of esports industry on hold

Numerous esports events have either been canceled lately or forced to play without fans in attendance due to concerns about the global spread of coronavirus, plus some professional leagues have either paused play or made significant changes due to the outbreak. Last week, Esports Insider explored the impact of coronavirus on the industry thus far, with perspective from some of the impacted tournament operators.

Alongside this weekend’s announcement of the season format changes, Psyonix also revealed that it is “working on a plan to bring you live online regional tournaments… in the coming months,” perhaps to help fill the void until the RLCS can begin its 10th season with another planned World Championship.

Esports Insider says: While it’s obviously disappointing for fans and players to see the RLCS World Championship cancelled and eliminated this season, Psyonix didn’t have a lot of options to cap off an in-progress season with a fast-approaching finals event. This seems like a reasonable solution to an unfortunate situation.

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