Message to Riot HQ about the changes revealed for the future of EU LCS

PREMISE: I am going to put down also here in NA forums the message I wrote on the announcement article published on EU lolesports (and thus on EU forums), because despite all the narrative of " Riot NA esport and Riot EU esport are two completely separate entities that each take independent decisions", we know from previous history that the Western Leagues are interwined between them and Riot HQ in NA has a very strong influence (at least, some would say that HQ leverage goes even beyond simple influence) on the decisions taken by the EU esports department. With this premise, please do not write message like "Why are you posting here about EU" or downvote for such futile reasons Also, it is a quite long message

THE MESSAGE

NOPE! NOPE! NOPE! WHY? WHY are you doing that? WHY do you want to kill European scene homogenizing it with NA one? WHY press for franchising when almost no one wants it?

EU scene is not like NA one. EU is not like NA that has barely talent availabe for their 10 LCS teams and lack of competitive underwood with minor tournaments and organizations. EU has way more talented players available and a lot more semi-pro regional organizations that endlessly try to grow to get to European level + other traditional sport investors (mainly soccer teams) which are keeping an eye on e-sports for the futur.e EU scene need to support these organizations on their growth plans to get to European level of competitiveness that are the backbone of compeitive league in EU, it does not need a closed "Super League" and then a minor throwaway competition for the organizations remaining out from the major league

EU needed more exposure for LCS and CS (checked, at least you did that even though waaaaaay too late and only after hearing people complaints for seasons), and especially more stability for the LCS and Challenger scene. It looks like there are step forwards for existing LCS teams in form of bigger economic suppor (even though basically only for the bigger orgs given the nature of the viewership bonus, creating a further compeitive advantage for the more estabilished teams), but overall you went the wrong direction for the entire scene.

What EU needed was strengthening the Challenger and below scene, not basically killing it

EU would be capable to expand their Challenger scene to get more organizations and investors in because there is enough talent and orgs out there capable to do it so, but those orgs needed stability because with the current CS structure you were either in the playoffs for LCS or out entirely, forced to earn again your spot.

You had only one job to do , Riot Eu. Expand initially CS to 8 teams, considerably increase the economic contribution to them, and give them way more exposure with Riot standard level productions (not the ESL prodcution crap, even though trained/gave to EU LCS some good young casters), with 4 teams going to playoffs, 5th and 6th keeping their CS spot, and the last two teams facing the Qualifiers, expanded to include the biggest regional scenes left out from the actual CSQ format like Italy and Balcan/Greece.

Encourage this way the competitive underwood to increase the level of these regional orgs and training more young players to be able to consider in the future a further LCS and/or CS expansion, to attract more local and pan-european sponsor and investors for the teams (and eventually evaluate if in the long term move to the "Champions League" format you were previously considering or stay with the standard LCS/CS format)

No one is going to seriously invest for some minor, local tournaments, with no chance to get to the big league someday. The system you are putting in place kills every possibility for the future growth of the overall EU scene, since the teams of "new partnership LCS system " in 2019 won't likely get the amount of investment NA teams are going to get because of endemic reasons (NA are two single big markets with the same language and all the companies have no local limitations like a good amount of major EU investors have), and the competitive undergorund would be given a serious death blow this way

I hope you can reconsider your plan for 2019 (it's probably too late for 2018 at this point unfortunately), because you are not doing EU scene good with these changes