EPTPersonally, I'd be far happier if EU and NA were merged. Both leagues are too top heavy to be interesting to watch; plus both leagues lack real depth. Take G2, UoL, Fanatic, H2K and one other EU team and add it to TSM, CLG, IMT, C9, and one NA team and make a league. Maybe have a 12 team league. Cut out the historically bad teams and the 1-season wonders. Keep the import rule if you really want.
2017 Esports General Discussion - Page 28
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geript
10024 Posts
Personally, I'd be far happier if EU and NA were merged. Both leagues are too top heavy to be interesting to watch; plus both leagues lack real depth. Take G2, UoL, Fanatic, H2K and one other EU team and add it to TSM, CLG, IMT, C9, and one NA team and make a league. Maybe have a 12 team league. Cut out the historically bad teams and the 1-season wonders. Keep the import rule if you really want. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35172 Posts
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DarkCore
Germany4194 Posts
Both leagues are too top heavy to be interesting to watch Isn't this something that occurs in a lot of sports and games though. I mean look at LCK, this year there were 4 clearly superior teams. It tends to be the product of their superior management, but also because as big orgs, they can buy and pay good players. Doublelift didn't go to TSM just because they asked nicely. The league is not going to even out if you merge both regions, there are always going to be top teams. League was, quite frankly, a shit esport to get into for orgs. Even before the salary boom it was awful at generating income. Because Riot set a vision that a lot of people believe in. I wouldn't be surprised if most Rioters are on board with the idea of developing esports and creating a scene with infrastructure. But in the end they are a business, they're not going to throw away money and pay teams more unless they need to. In that regard, franchising might be a good thing, because it means teams are not entirely dependent on Riot. Stable league positions would attract more investors who view esports as a means to advertise their products, then they're no longer dependent on Riot charity. Not great for the small upcoming teams, but they don't really stand a chance against big teams who have coaches and funding. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35172 Posts
On September 03 2017 21:22 DarkCore wrote: Isn't this something that occurs in a lot of sports and games though. I mean look at LCK, this year there were 4 clearly superior teams. It tends to be the product of their superior management, but also because as big orgs, they can buy and pay good players. Doublelift didn't go to TSM just because they asked nicely. The league is not going to even out if you merge both regions, there are always going to be top teams. Because Riot set a vision that a lot of people believe in. I wouldn't be surprised if most Rioters are on board with the idea of developing esports and creating a scene with infrastructure. But in the end they are a business, they're not going to throw away money and pay teams more unless they need to. In that regard, franchising might be a good thing, because it means teams are not entirely dependent on Riot. Stable league positions would attract more investors who view esports as a means to advertise their products, then they're no longer dependent on Riot charity. Not great for the small upcoming teams, but they don't really stand a chance against big teams who have coaches and funding. I mean, when TSM had their NA lineup in CS:GO and was still making more money off of CS:GO than League, there's clearly a problem. If anything, TSM and other big teams were doing charity for Riot by having a team play in their league. As for small up and coming teams, it was a non-issue in NA. Off the top of my head, there was nowhere near the turnover of teams in NA as even the best of challenger teams often got bopped by the worst of LCS, and no team outside of C9 had continued success and instead opted to sell of their spot shortly after. No team in NA has been relegated and came back(DIG is just Apex rebranded by ownership) because unlike EU where there is some interest in Challenger, and below that, country based leagues that can keep teams afloat while they get their stuff in order. Whatever small or up and coming org makes it in will be buoyed by revenue sharing. In this example of a split using 2017 Spring as a model with a 40m league income, despite poor viewership and the lowest standings, NV still would have made half as much as TSM, who were the clear highest in both. TL would have made more than IMT, EF, and DIG because of brand loyalty(5th) to offset their poor standings(9th). | ||
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geript
10024 Posts
I'm not expecting that if the leagues merged that things would be perfect. But the league would have more competitive teams and thus more competitive games. Part of the reason why I skip most NA and EU is that well over half the games aren't competitive and will never be competitive. In LCK this year you could easily skip BBQ's and Ever8's games and be missing nothing. It's not just a quality of play thing (I.e. LCK showing off the most interesting play/counterplay); it's also that you lack the higher percentage of Challenger vs gold games and the wood vs wood games that are prevalent in EU and NA. There will always be teams that have a bad split, teams that struggle, teams that do dumb shit, teams that lack requisite talent, etc. But if you take the top half of both leagues and mash them up, then the Top vs mid and mid vs mid games become more interesting to watch. Even if you expect TSM to win, there's far higher likelihood of IMT/C9/CLG to beat TSM than Evho fox, TL, or the various other consistent shitters/relegation teams. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35172 Posts
Even then, the timing would be iffy. If we go by current NALCS timings, the league starts at noon local time. This means LCS would start at 9am on the West Coast, a poor time during weekends when a good chunk of the target demographic is sleeping/at church, and 6PM(going off of Berlin time) for EU, which means it will stretch well into the night on Sundays for them. Flexing games out to Friday doesn't do much good, since if you set the games at 3PM local (noon West Coast, 9PM EU) you lose most of the West coast, a lot of the East, and probably some of EU for significant portions of time. There might be some way to weight the schedule so game with EU teams or mixed games are earlier and ones with NA teams are later, but I'm not sure how clean that schedule would be. | ||
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DarkCore
Germany4194 Posts
But if you take the top half of both leagues and mash them up, then the Top vs mid and mid vs mid games become more interesting to watch. This is why we have Worlds, and why Riot should really allow more international tournaments. Their draconian grip on the competitive scene has stifled growth in that regard. Also, I do see some merit in the argument 'If we had more contact between regions, overall the skill level would increase'. If mid tier teams were given the chance to prepare and play against other regions, they would gain valuable experience. Since season 3 or 4 there have been 4-5 teams that have been consider Worlds contenders from Korea. Sometimes as many as 6. Lol, Korea is definitely best region and dominate the game, but saying that they've been fielding 4-6 contenders since season 3 is a bit of a stretch. Last year I'd say it was 4, but S5, S4 and S3 they fielded 2, maybe you could argue 3, teams that could win it. Korea is going to win worlds every year, but even they're not perfect. This year they had 4 contenders again, only 3 can go, but 5/6 is just flat out wrong. | ||
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cLutZ
United States19574 Posts
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chipmonklord17
United States11944 Posts
On September 03 2017 22:10 Gahlo wrote: The biggest issue with a mega LCS is the logistics would be terrible. To make it more acessible to everybody, you'd need to move LCS to the East Coast. This means all esports staff at Riot have to drop whatever non-esports duties they have and would need to be moved across country. All the teams would have to relocate. Riot would need to make a new studio to hold it is. Even then, the timing would be iffy. If we go by current NALCS timings, the league starts at noon local time. This means LCS would start at 9am on the West Coast, a poor time during weekends when a good chunk of the target demographic is sleeping/at church, and 6PM(going off of Berlin time) for EU, which means it will stretch well into the night on Sundays for them. Flexing games out to Friday doesn't do much good, since if you set the games at 3PM local (noon West Coast, 9PM EU) you lose most of the West coast, a lot of the East, and probably some of EU for significant portions of time. There might be some way to weight the schedule so game with EU teams or mixed games are earlier and ones with NA teams are later, but I'm not sure how clean that schedule would be. This. This doesn't even take into account the logistics of having around FIFTY (10 EULCS teams x 5 players per team) players that could, repercussion free join an NALCS team. Do you expand the league? Are there enough sponsors in NA willing to accommodate the change? How many teams would it take? Would teams just pick up the EU players and push NA players out? Would KR imports skyrocket because EU players no longer take up spots themselves? Honestly the idea with a mega LCS sounds kinda cool, and then you remember it would be a logistics nightmare and likely worse in the long run. | ||
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Slusher
United States19143 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Gahlo
United States35172 Posts
There's also the issue of the teams not being good at generating fandom. Fnatic is around, but OG is gone. Gambit got screwed by visas. EG/Alliance left/disbanded. There aren't many buge fandoms left in EU outside of Fnatic and maybe UOL. You could also say that due to German laws making the times for EU bad for gaining viewers. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Redox
Germany24794 Posts
On September 04 2017 05:56 JimmiC wrote: All could be true. You are just not in a good negotiating position when now NA has 4x the viewers. It would be like the NHL complaining that the NFL has a better T.V. Deal. Dude come one I get where you are coming from but going from a nonsense number to an even more absurd one is not a way to discuss. The numbers on reddit from the bot that counts the overall viewers: EU final: 358k NA final: 408k That is 14% more for NA not 300%. Difference on 3rd place match was even smaller. Maybe it is sometimes different idk but never was twice as much for NA let alone 4 times lol. Should also be noted that it is a downward trend overall. Lastly, people are way overestimating the role of viewers since teams are not directly profiting from them. The money is coming from rather irrational investors who we can not really expect to ever see an adequate return. And in NA there are apparently way more investors ready to make a huge leap of faith and burn some money. It is the vc culture at work. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Torchise
Canada245 Posts
On September 04 2017 10:27 JimmiC wrote: From the viewer count on this site. You mean the numbers in the Live Streams section? It only shows how many viewers are on twitch.tv for the main english stream. To get the real number (which the Reddit bot gets right), you have to take into account all the separate language streams for EU (french, german, etc.) as well as the Youtube streams, which add up to the 350K+ figure for the EU LCS finals that was mentioned above. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35172 Posts
On September 04 2017 08:44 Redox wrote: Dude come one I get where you are coming from but going from a nonsense number to an even more absurd one is not a way to discuss. The numbers on reddit from the bot that counts the overall viewers: EU final: 358k NA final: 408k That is 14% more for NA not 300%. Difference on 3rd place match was even smaller. Maybe it is sometimes different idk but never was twice as much for NA let alone 4 times lol. Should also be noted that it is a downward trend overall. Lastly, people are way overestimating the role of viewers since teams are not directly profiting from them. The money is coming from rather irrational investors who we can not really expect to ever see an adequate return. And in NA there are apparently way more investors ready to make a huge leap of faith and burn some money. It is the vc culture at work. Finals is a bad judge of league popularity though. There's more people willing to watch TL games than NiP games. | ||
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chipmonklord17
United States11944 Posts
On September 04 2017 11:58 Gahlo wrote: Finals is a bad judge of league popularity though. There's more people willing to watch TL games than NiP games. Comparing TL and NiP isn't a fair fight. TL is one of the most popular Esports brand in existence and NiP is pretty much a CS org as far as I know. Also the fact that NiP was a bunch of literal whos being the punching bag of LCS for 10 weeks where TL has some established members and put up fights randomly. A much better comparison would be something like Mysterious Monkeys to P1 viewership wise | ||
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Gahlo
United States35172 Posts
On September 04 2017 12:24 chipmonklord17 wrote: Comparing TL and NiP isn't a fair fight. TL is one of the most popular Esports brand in existence and NiP is pretty much a CS org as far as I know. Also the fact that NiP was a bunch of literal whos being the punching bag of LCS for 10 weeks where TL has some established members and put up fights randomly. A much better comparison would be something like Mysterious Monkeys to P1 viewership wise But even then, there's some hype about P1 because people know Arrow is good and they want to see if Mike is gonna pop off or not. | ||
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
Edit: Okay, it was all a ruse. NEVERMIND. | ||
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