League of Legends Professionals Qualify for Visas as Athletes
This past Thursday Riot announced that League of Legends players were approved by the US government for visas based on their status as professional athletes on par with other sports organizations such as the NFL, MLB, and the NBA. This at first may seem like a good get for Riot and League of Legends players, but in reality, it sets the precedent for all esports professionals to achieve the same status. (Although there will still be plenty of paperwork involved for other games)
This change will fix a lot of problems with travel arrangements for foreign teams coming in to America and take a lot of stress off the team managers as well so they can focus more on taking care of their players. Regardless of how you feel about League of Legends or Riot, you have to give them props for the probably incredible amount of red tape and paperwork they had to wade through to get this ground-breaking acknowledgement and really can’t underplay their involvement in propelling e-sports into the mainstream in this case.
Here’s hoping that every professional will be able to rest easy going into tournaments, as it will only serve to give us better competition to watch if they’re well rested and stress free as they come into each weekend.
