Now IMT has no stake in LoL at all, and they can actually try to get people to come to LAOWL games instead. Whereas if IMT were in both games, they would have an interest to get people to both.
This just seems unreasonable to me. IMT is in the top of every eSport, denying them based on a geographic location of a league on its first season makes no sense.
This is a very stupid decision. Riot is serving as an indirect marketer for the OWL. This kind of actions will make the public and light esports fans without full details between those two games believe that the OWL is an emerging threat to LCS although the current situations say 'never for now'.