5 Comments
I think riot a lot of the time has to make decisions where there is no right answer and they are struggling to find the least wrong path to take.
On some level I understand that relegation is a terrible thing not only for the players on those teams, but for the owners as well who's investment essentially loses 95% of its value. The flip side of the coin is that teams like Coast, when they were struggling, were not fun to watch at all. They lost every single game monumentally and I was glad a better team replaced them. I think teams like echo fox need to make adjustments sooner rather than going 1 and 17. If relegation didn't exist then there needs to be other mechanics in place to make sure the bottom teams are still making improvements.
He talked a lot about stability for the players when certain champions or play styles fall out of favor then the pros who had mastered those champions/player style struggle. A jungler who was recruited and is being prized because he is an awesome reksai/gragas player will suddenly lose most of what they offer when those champions are nerfed. It's an unfortunate situation, but again the game gets really stale with out riot arbitrarily forcing champion rotations. I think fans/players would agree that the game is much better when balance is close enough that pros are able to play more pocket picks with out being at a massive disadvantage due to not playing the current S tier champions.
Patch timing is just as difficult. I don't even know how many people play this game, but the last number I saw was in the 33+ million active players. It is really hard to delay patches around the lcs schedule especially when many of those 33 million do not give a damn about esports. The solution can't be to then just delay things like play offs by a couple weeks to give the players more time to adjust to patches before playing for high stakes. I personally believe that riot would lose a substantial portion of their viewers if they do not regularly produce content at a scheduled time. Fans/viewers are surprisingly fickle and need to develop/keep viewing habits for esports to succeed.
Riot has to balance the interests of multiple groups most of which is conflicting with each other. There is no right answer in choosing between fans who want to see more champions played, variety and strong competition and owners/players who want stability in an ever changing game.
It wouldn't be as big of a deal if relegation didn't mean losing basically your entire LoL business. The only way you can make money is off of sponsorships, and you're not going to keep sponsors if you get relegated. You need a decent amount of money to fund a challenger team, but you can't pay that amount if you have no sponsors (especially since player stipends only apply to LCS players). Look at this year's promotion tournament, the teams with chances to actually move up were Team Liquid Academy and C9 challenger, both had a primary team and brand which served to fund the challenger squad. These two teams dominated the challenger scene and no one else really had a chance.
With this environment, where you must be in the LCS to have a competitive league team, but where there is no stability with the relegation system for major investment from sponsors, a patch change which completely alters the way the game has been played for a couple years is a HUGE deal. Right now league teams are basically at the peak of how successful they can be, and the only way to improve the scene is for Riot to implement major changes to the LCS itself.
At this point either eliminate the LCS and have a sort of CS:go style where you just play in tournaments, but are free to pursue business any way you please, or actually take the time and effort to turn LCS into an actual professional sports league which is capable of expanding in ways which go beyond simply having more viewers.
Riot could monetize the League itself, which could then in turn improve stability and increase everyone's profits, as opposed to right now where the reality of the situation is that the LCS is just an advertisement for Riot and LoL themselves. If you wonder why leagues like the NBA and NFL seem to have more money than they know what to do with, and Riot is telling off team owners for not pointlessly investing an even higher percentage of earnings into the league, it's because it's not simply a matter of viewership. The difference is that the NFL is open to the idea of selling broadcasting rights, having advertisements from major corporations like Coca-Cola all over everything, basically selling out as much as possible to earn every cent that they can, which does make it back to the players and owners, and Riot is more interested in selling skins and champions. While the truth of the matter is that Riot could easily do both, they are completely sold on this idea of owning everything and having absolutely nothing which could distract the viewer from the game itself. It would be like if the NFL and the teams only made money off of ticket sales, selling replica jerseys, and streaming revenue from YouTube. A decent amount of money sure, but many levels of magnitude less than they could be making.