A few weeks ago, the Smite Pro League cancelled its matches out of respect for a tragic passing on its broadcast talent. The loss of John "Finch" Finch hit the team and community hard and the SPL and Challenger Circuit broadcasts were all temporarily postponed. However, Hi-Rez Studios has now revealed that the SPL will in fact be back later today, with a slightly tweaked schedule to make up for the missed games.
As the return will clash with Phase 1 of the SPL, the originally planned double-round robin format will now instead shift to a single-round robin to round out the phase. The second-round that was planned will now become a group stage series that will seed the teams competing in the Phase 1 Playoffs planned for late June.
The group stage will also see a small draft show, where the top two teams get to pick which teams will play in the opposition's group.
This means that for this week, the schedule will be split as follows:
- Thursday, June 3 (1:00 PM ET) — Dragons vs Valkyries, Kings vs Warriors
- Friday, June 4 (1:00 PM ET) — Scarabs vs Leviathans, Titans vs Bolts
- Friday, June 4 (Post-SPL) — Group Stage Draft Show
- Saturday, June 5 (1:00 PM ET) — Group A (Team 1 vs Team 2), Group B (Team 1 vs Team 2)
- Sunday, June 6 (1:00 PM ET) — Group A (Team 3 vs Team 4), Group B (Team 3 vs Team 4)
- The Smite Challenger Circuit will not be seeing any changes, due to its more flexible schedule.
