LCS Teams Deny Scrims with Echo Fox

On February 02 2017 11:35 cLutZ wrote:
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that the LCS owners are trying to make Echo Fox fail.

On February 05 2017 14:08 Zato-1 wrote:

I feel pretty ignorant about this. I have some notion of who the owners of about half of the teams are, but I've no idea about how they get along with one another. All 9 other owners ganging up the one team is both surprisingly harsh and unprecedented- my intuition tells me that Echo Fox must have been stepping on a lot of toes lately, to manage to piss off so many other owners so hard.

I know about the letter that Echo Fox refused to sign, and that's almost certainly one factor that led to this decision, but I doubt that's all there is to it. I also doubt we'll ever get much more info on this topic; this is all the result of some very private dealings which are probably quite awkward to explain in detail to an audience that isn't versed in the nuances of team relations.

On February 05 2017 14:39 cLutZ wrote:


Here is the situation, IMO.

#1 There is a massive inflation in player salaries, team valuation, etc. Whether this is a bubble or actually sustainable growth is for a more locked in person than me to know.

#2 Endemic LCS owners have trouble keeping up. Thus outside investment is needed to fund the teams.

#3 Rick Fox, instead of investing started his own team. This is the opposite of what they would have wanted.

#4 On top of that they more likely than not tried to poach a player.

On February 06 2017 08:26 Bill Murray wrote:

4) no. Riot has said that's an untrue rumor. https://www.google.com/amp/wwg.com/esports/amp/2016/12/16/riot-clarifies-poaching-issue-between-echo-fox-and-adrian/

Echo Fox were trying to sign adrian at the same time as p1. If p1 had released that they signed him that's great , but they hadn't proven they had done so to riot at the time echo fox had offered him papers to sign . Announcements don't mean shit, unless there's truth behind it. Venues used to falsely advertise they had Jimi Hendrix, the doors , etc playing and then you'd get there and be like wtf . A lot of people were surprised Woodstock delivered on their announcement , for instance . Was it poaching ? No. Was it slightly unethical ? Maybe. You be the judge .

On February 08 2017 03:40 JimmiC wrote:
Depends on if LoL growth is a bubble or sustainable. If your talking game changing money I would sell 75% of it bet set up and then have the other 25% incase the growth continues.

On February 08 2017 04:09 JimmiC wrote:
Because all the others paid a franchise fee. This is not the NBA or NFL. This is a 4 year old business model that no one knows if it is at all sustainable. In England someone can buy a shit tier 2 team load it with players and move up to the premiership. That is a far better comparison. Basically happened with Manchester city.

It is petty and foolish to try to black ball EF. They should instead see how it can benefit them.

On February 08 2017 06:46 JimmiC wrote:
And how does not scriming with EF fix any of what you have stated above?

On February 08 2017 07:09 Sent. wrote:
Their logic is that "if you can't scrim with the best, you won't be the best" therefore it should be impossible to keep a team in LCS without cooperating with the old guard because atm they're the best. It's like they're forgetting all you need to do get into the LCS is buying 2 decent foreigners and signing some shitters from local solo Q to fill the remaining slots.

Such strategy could work in Korea where the teams are actually the best but in NA it shouldn't work unless Riot decides to switch to franchising model.

On February 08 2017 08:07 Gahlo wrote:

He looks that way because only one of his lanes knows how to not fail in lane, let alone carry one.

On February 06 2017 09:21 chipmonklord17 wrote:


The exact opposite actually. The scene growing like that is beneficial to the players and the fans but detrimental to the owners. What happens if 9 of Rick Fox's closest friends see EF and go "man I should go do that"? Overnight they could buy out every team in the league that doesn't have a competitive sponsor (i.e. Dig having the 76ers, FlyQuest, etc). These people have more money in their bank accounts than TSM has made in its entire life. There is no reason that TSM, C9 and the like should be nice to them, for their own sake.

I'm not saying I LIKE that, I'm saying I understand from a business standpoint why you would tell your team they aren't allowed to scrim EF

On February 10 2017 08:04 Nemireck wrote:


I hadn't considered the possibility that rich people could just buy 5 fantastic players and start their own team, forcing established brands like TSM and C9 into relegation without any benefit from helping build the entire eSport (if we must call it that) to begin with. Interesting point.

Thus the fight for franchising and literally "owning" the LCS slot rather than relegation and the like. Once franchising is put in place, would that change the strategy RE: Working with EF to grow the eSport?

On February 10 2017 08:11 cLutZ wrote:


Yes, the whole point of them wanting franchising is so that future Rick Foxes need to buy the team from, say, Hotshot, because there is no other way to get into the league.

On February 11 2017 23:37 JimmiC wrote:
great post about he economics of esports. None of it remotely explains why riot would want to go to franchising system or how blackballing investment would make them want to more? Why would they want to give increased power to people who are already trying to push them around?

This is not Hockey, football or basketball no one owned those sports. RIOT owns league, you have to work with them not try to push them into things by being dinks. It is very junior high and it is not a well thought out strategy.

On February 12 2017 02:28 chipmonklord17 wrote:



Yes and no. At the end of the day Riot can tell you to go fuck yourself, but if you think an LCS without C9/TSM/CLG/TL would be remotely as popular as it is today you're kidding yourself. Riot owns the league but the teams ARE the league. And those teams make far more money in CS:GO (where Valve has given far more opportunities for teams to make money) and the teams no longer need LoL. Regi made his empire now, he doesn't need Riot to make money, but Riot sure as hell needs TSM for people to care

On February 12 2017 04:21 GrandInquisitor wrote:

You 100% have it exactly backwards. And the proof is that the teams already tried to do this and failed. They said to Riot, "Franchise or we'll leave LCS", Riot called them on that bluff, and the teams went back to LCS, not franchised.

TSM is nothing without League. Their biggest non-League superstar is probably Leffen, one of the absolute gods of the game, top 3 in the world. He has 65k followers on Twitch. Dyrus, their retired top laner who was pretty bad in a region of bad top laners, has 20x that number. CLG's CS:GO players have 1/10 of Leffen's followers.

LCS is the only game that gives them the steady fan/income base off of which they can build into other brands.

On August 23 2016 Reginald wrote:
(...) there's a belief at Riot that team owners make a lot of money off LCS and invest it into other eSports, but that is far from the truth. (...) other LCS team organizations invested into CS:GO early and made more money for players in one year from CS:GO stickers than Riot paid them in three years of stipends and icon sales combined and that game is only a fraction of the size of LoL.

(...)

It used to be true that we made money from LoL eSports, but that was before LCS and the economic situation is getting progressively worse.

Most LCS teams lose money because stipends are stagnant, sponsorships for LCS team operations are shrinking and the cost of player salaries, content production, support staff and housing costs are spiraling up."

On February 12 2017 04:53 GrandInquisitor wrote:
Yeah, I mean, I'm shocked that Reginald would write a letter saying that TSM needs more money from Riot. SHOCKED I tell you.

On February 12 2017 04:53 GrandInquisitor wrote:
No one forces TSM to pay top dollar for Doublelift/Bjergsen

On February 12 2017 04:21 GrandInquisitor wrote:
LCS is the only game that gives them the steady fan/income base off of which they can build into other brands.

On February 12 2017 05:34 Zato-1 wrote:

Regi saying TSM makes no money directly from LCS may be predictable, but that doesn't make it untrue. Unless you claim that Regi is straight-up lying about this.


Since when is a tiny fraction of what a streamer makes top dollar?

So, analogy time. The business model of sports in general is that sports teams attract fans, oftentimes very heavily invested fans, and then unrelated brands sponsor those sports teams which serves as advertising for them. Then the actual broadcasts of games are also served with ads and require a subscription to view, so that the broadcast makes for an additional source of revenue, and each team collects some part of it.

LoL eSports does not work that way. The broadcast is free to watch because Riot wants people to watch it, not to make money from the broadcast. And then sponsors are heavily limited in how visible they are as sponsors of a given team, according to Regi's letter, because again, Riot wants LoL eSports to be advertising for its own product first and foremost. With the broadcast making no money for LoL teams, and sponsorship income being limited by Riot's strict regulations for it, I believe Regi when he says that most teams lose money in LoL eSports, IF you don't factor in accounting intangibles such as the brand value that they gain.

Naturally, that's a big if. I'm pretty sure TSM and C9 make money overall as organizations, considering that they keep growing, and that LCS is a cornerstone of their operation. However, I get the impression that the business model is fairly convoluted- they get most of their fans in LoL eSports, gaining brand value, and then cash in on that brand value via other eSports, where they have more diversified revenue streams. If I'm right about this, then it's a wonky but workable relationship between LoL team owners and Riot. I do believe LoL eSports could have substiantially higher revenue if only Riot wasn't so restrictive about alternative revenue streams- top streamer incomes being vastly greater than elite player incomes seems to support this- but at the end of the day, I agree that it's Riot's call to make and if they'd rather not do it, then that's that.


I only meant to argue the point that LoL teams make money off of LoL and invest it into other eSports- what I've read leads me to think that, nowadays, the fans are in LCS, but the money is elsewhere, at least as far as team owners are concerned.

I do believe LoL eSports could have substiantially higher revenue if only Riot wasn't so restrictive about alternative revenue streams- top streamer incomes being vastly greater than elite player incomes seems to support this