How come female teams are allowed to play VCT and Academy teams aren’t. Is there some kind of policy behind this?
the purpose of an acadamy team is an extension of the main roster. a female team is completely separate, think about like an MLB minor league team. there is no reason for a single a team to play in a baseball club tourny. but there is a reason for a female baseball team to do so. does that make sense?
Going back to late 2014 in the World final of leagues, two Korean teams named Samsung White and Samsung Blue made it to the quarter-final and blue lost 0-3 to Samsung white even tho the Blue team has been dominating for an entire year in the Korea scene. This makes Riot worried about the conflict of interest. After this, Riot regulates one owner can only operate one team.
The reason for this is that, in case a main-team player is absent for some reason, 95% of the time an academy player is promoted temporarily or permanently depending on the situation. This could cause issues if, for example, both C9 and C9A were to make it to a LAN or challenger's main event, Leaf got sick, C9 would want to pull poiz to sub, but couldn't because he's also playing for the academy team at the same or similar times. Essentially, it comes down to the academy players basically being subs who can be promoted if they do well enough.