Longzhu will officially be changing its name for the 2018 Spring Split, due to a change in ownership.
Longzhu TV’s CEO plufriend broke the news:
Translation:
I wanted to wait a few days but it seems that tomorrow Korean side has to make a statement, league (lolesports) doesn’t allow any suspected subject owning two teams, so forced me to sell longzhu, the argument has been going on for half a year now, still can’t do anything. Starting tomorrow team will change its name, still a Chinese company called 综皇(kingzone, aka kz). Longzhu TV will become their sponsor and stream partner. It’s a shame that I didn’t even think of letting Prilla stream, it’ll soon happen.
Longzhu’s former owner was Chinese streaming platform Longzhu TV. Large chinese company Su Ning purchased Longzhu TV in November 2017. This represents the latest of Su Ning‘s esports accomplishments, also managing to work their way into LPL by buying TGB, a LSPL team advanced into LPL in spring promotion/relegation series. During spring split there has been several news articles on Longzhu’s poor structure, and discussed salary problems exposed by former members Expression and Emperor.
Longzhu may be operating under a different company next split, but their team members will remain, and start streaming on Longzhu TV soon. plufriend later commented on Kingzone’s info on Hupu, revealing that it has multiple investors, including a top-5 Chinese company. He also confirmed that all Longzhu staff will remain with the org.
During the 2018 off-season, Longzhu added jungler Wang “Peanut” Ho Han into their lineup. Peanut was teammates with Longzhu’s bot lane duo back in 2016, potentially bringing new synergy to the team, and leading many to wonder if Longzhu may be a top contender for in Korea next split.
2018 LCK will have two new names: KSV and KZ. Hopefully fans can get used to them quickly, as LCK will be back live on 16th Jan on twitch.tv/lck1.