Why Liquid?

IncrediPhiLL·Oct 17, 2017·5 votes·678 views

Can someone please explain to me what Liquid is doing on the list of Franchised teams!? No success! Nearly relegated! Trash ownership! What am I missing?

Get rid of DIG, but keep Liquid! I call BS!

8 Comments

ChompyWulfOct 17, 20173 votes

Must be a money move. It's sad that an older team like Dignitas who has had ups and downs was denied while Liquid just seems to suffer two forms of downs but by all accounts is in.

HemanthOct 18, 20173 votes

Liquid won DOTA worlds, they be rich

xJLx MCHammerOct 17, 20171 votes

I really do want to know what determines who is allowed or not

I'm surprised Liquid is in when they had so much problems with payments, bad image..etc.

BigBellBruteOct 18, 20171 votes

IMT is out according to sources says espn. And imt's owner had his ducks in a row first and even carried a lot of water for riot on the franchising thing. By all accounts a rah rah guy for them.

Guess this is IMt's reward.

Miror BOct 17, 20171 votes

I'm under the assumption it's because of two things:

TL's financial backing is far superior to that of dig's, such that if the corperation that owns them wanted to they could buy dig 6 times over
More importantly, TL's success in OTHER esports (not league, as for some strange reason it's as if steve's mind "derps" out whenever he does anything involving rito) theoretically makes them better than a newer dig ownership.

While I personally don't like the move either (as I entirely expect TL to exploit the whole "not being booted unless they finish in the bottom-3 for 4 of 5 splits" rule), it sorta makes sense if you focus entirely on the financial and non-league esports side of it.

AzureDragoonOct 18, 20171 votes

There is one other point I offer as a possible theory. And that's DIG 2016.

If you recall, when DIG got relegated after Spring Split 2016 that rather than stay in the NA CS, DIG decided to jump ship and sell their CS spot off to Apex Gaming, under the decision at the time that they wanted to instead invest in their teams for other games. Indeed, the reason why DIG is even back, is because in September of '16 is not because DIG battled their way back into the NA LCS, but because the Philadelphia 76ers bought DIG and APEX, merged the teams together, and then fielded under the DIG banner for 2017.

That would arguably not settle well with Riot's E-sports division, having a team just up and leave because it became inconvenient for them for 1 split.

Miror BOct 18, 20171 votes

The problem though is that your idea kinda ignores what actually happened. The 76'ers ownership brought in an entirely new staff to handle dig/apex stuff (only keeping the players and a few of the coaches if I remember correctly). The people in management positions were from what I remember replaced entirely, so although there were familiar faces on the surface the people in the background were those with far more business/esports experience. Overall, I'm sticking to my idea of Dig bringing far less $ to the table and not having as much success in this group, as years of playing league and pc games in general as kinda taught me that large companies are willing to sell their morals if it means extra cash in their pockets.

Ale non è maleOct 18, 20171 votes

{quoted}

The problem though is that your idea kinda ignores what actually happened.

Yes and no. You are correct about the part where DIG basically rebuilt a new organization under the DIG brand, but that's probably why Riot probably considered them on the same level of the recently VC backed team and not as one of the legacy teams with their brand value as major asset for their application (DIG obviously has brand value, but it's not like it has more than other esports org like let's say NV or OpTic)

Since the decline and the relaunch, DIG has always been a team that "kinda" were there, but not exactly a legacy team. They are like the Giants of NA, heck probably the current GIA roster that got promoted to LCS has more brand value in LOL that DIG as they cater to some of the biggest EU markets that were not represented yet in EU LCS (they are adding basically the entire portoguese and italian community to their traditional strong spanish fan base + a lot of people are curious about trash talk god Gillius)