CaptainFlowers will not be casting during MSI 2024
30 April 2024
We don’t have to tell the League of Legends fans out there that it’s almost time for the Mid-Season Invitational 2024. From May 1st to May 15th, the tournament will be held in Chengdu, in China, where the champions of each global region plus the runners-up of the major regions will compete for one of the most prestigious titles in LoL.
As every year, fans and players of League of Legends and international esports in general will be tuning in to follow all of the action. One LoL mainstay they will not be seeing during the event though, is Clayton “CaptainFlowers” Raines. The notorious and hugely popular shout caster has announced that he will not be traveling to Chengdu to cast the MSI 2024. He did receive an invitation from the organization, but decided to decline it due to personal and health reasons.
Back for the LCS Summer Split
Fortunately, CaptainFlowers immediately made sure to let the fans know that his absence from MSI 2024 is not a goodbye. In the same announcement, he said that he will be taking the entire month of May 2024 off and that he will be returning to LoL casting at the start of the upcoming LCS Summer Split, which is set to kick off in June.
Now, as to the reasons for his surprising absence in Chengdu, CaptainFlowers cites health and personal wellbeing. As he is based in North America, the time difference between his location and Chengdu would be around 10 hours, and he fears that he will struggle too much with the changes to his sleep schedule while working.
On top of that, CaptainFlowers has a serious soy allergy, which is a common ingredient in Chinese cuisine. He already encountered a similar problem when working in South Korea during Worlds 2023, or the League of Legends 2023 Season world Championship as it’s officially called. This fact helped him to decide not to attend the 2024 MSI.
“With the event being in China, I also have the added difficulty of constantly having to be paranoid about everything I eat”, CaptainFlowers says in his statement on his own X account, “A ton of Asian food contains soy and I’m allergic to soy, I feel sick for hours if I accidentally eat it, and so having to double or triple-check everything that I eat without being able to read or speak the language to even know that I’m making a mistake would be pretty rough”.
Even without CaptainFlowers in the lineup, the MSI 2024 is still offering a lot of broadcasting talent besides the official streams. This includes Reagan “Mrs Chim Chim” Chim from the United States, Ibai “Ibai” Llanos from Spain, and Luis “Absolut” Felipe Carvalho from Brazil, just to name a few. The hunt for a part of the $ 250.000 prize pool will start on May 1st with the Play-In Stage, which will feature Fnatic, LOUD Esports and Estral Esports, among others.