You may have seen that SNKRS launches now show a LEO launch method vs PHIL in the Nike Canada Monitor. The first time this was implemented was the A Ma Maniere release a few weeks ago
Every release since then on has been a LEO release, including the ‘Giraffe’ Dunks, ’What The P-Rod’s, etc.
All anyone outside of Nike knew about the PHIL release method was that speed played some part in you getting the shoes, but was never FCFS as I’ve been seeing people saying recently. If this was the case nobody would’ve ever would ever won on big releases manually. Even the biggest bots do not submit their entries right on the dot
LEO is the launch method that is commonly used for SNKRS US. It’s a 2 minute initial period of entry before it begins selecting winners
So to answer some questions:
So what’s the difference between both release methods?
The only thing that’s changed is the set of criteria that Nike uses to determine who wins and who doesn’t. Both of which are entirely unknown and speculative outside of Nike. Both the old PHIL and LEO launch methods are technically Draws as it selects a random group of winners from a large subset of entries after the initial 2 minute entry period, but Nike’s system has always favoured certain accounts, which people most people attribute to Spending, Activity, Engagement, etc. The same was true for PHIL and the same is still true for LEO releases on Nike US
Are the ATC links still needed?
These were never required, but helped speed up the entry process (especially on high traffic drops where the site would go down). People have won with them and won without them. I’ll still be using them and they will still be there for anyone else who wants to use them as well
Are my chances of copping better?
Canada already does not get allocated much stock to begin with and we share with at least 4 different regions on SNKRS drops. I do think the change will result in different people copping vs the same few who hit on all the big releases
I personally think it’s worth waking up for certain releases with bigger stock. Especially if you have a good purchase history on Nike.ca
Why did we see so many winners on the Fragment Dunk Release?
First off stock was high like I mentioned earlier in the week, but Nike and Akamai have been aggressively pushing updates to their bot protection over the past 2 months. For a few weeks last month, most Nike bots were entirely down or showing minimal success.
Another update was pushed on Thursday night ahead of this release and bots weren’t able to update in time, which is why some people were able to enter 40+ minutes late and still cop some smaller sizes
This should really be the bigger talking point, instead of people making threads about Nike changing launch methods from PHIL to LEO, because the reality is, that doesn’t mean much. Bots adapt to changes all the time. We saw 1 W for P-Rods and 1 for the Giraffe Dunks (bots were working for both releases), so anyone’s chances of copping on these releases won’t change much unless Akamai keeps pushing continuous updates, which we’ve seen they clearly can do