Shoutcasting Esports

As someone who recently went through the process of becoming a caster, I can try to help you out a little bit here by telling you the path I took. The first thing to know though, is that amateur casting doesn't have a set "road to success," and your experience will be different from everyone else's. Don't take this as a strict blueprint for how to go pro, take it as an example of one way another person did it.

I started amateur casting in summer of 2015 by casting my friends' soloQ games by myself in my bedroom. I recorded them, watched my casts back, and worked on the things I thought needed improving on. After a month of that, I started looking for things to cast with an audience, and found myself here on the League forums. The first thing I casted was a random tournament from the forums for 8 viewers. I did forum stuff for about a month or so, but the issue with that method is that it's very random. You never know if you'll have something to cast that week or if it's gonna be run well or if there's even going to be many teams playing. I wanted something more reliable.

That's how I found an organization called Houseparty5v5. It was an amateur LCS-style community that had weekly games as part of a longer season, just like LCS does. I joined up with them in fall of 2015 and casted with them until they collapsed in August 2016. One of the houseparty games I casted featured a big teamfight at baron, and someone recorded that part of the cast. They uploaded it to youtube in April of 2016, and it went viral overnight, getting around 250k views. The next day I found an email from Riot in my inbox. That teamfight call put me on their radar. Even after I started interviewing with Riot though, I kept looking for every opportunity I could to continue casting and putting my name out there. I kept doing Houseparty casts and started doing English casts of non-English events like the LMS Playoffs, Demacia Cup, etc. After a long period of interviews, I was hired by Riot to join the NALCS team for the 2017 season.

Amatuer casting is a long, hard, and often thankless road. You'll put in a ton of hours, sometimes to have the end product only watched by 10 people. You'll rarely, if ever, get paid. You'll wonder if you're even doing the right stuff to get noticed, because it's so hard to tell since there is no "right answer." Despite all that though, you've just got to keep looking for every opportunity you can find or make to show everyone what you can do and who you are.

Best of luck!