Esports will never be comparable to "normal" sports as long as they're run by gaming companies

Imagine if baseball could only be played on MLB-owned fields with the professional-level rules, different positions and equipment had to be "unlocked" by grinding, and MLB was the only licensed producer of baseball jerseys.

Or imagine if the NFL technically "owned" any football equient you had, and all that equipment and the game itself was utterly dependant on the NFL being up-and-running, actively hosting it for you.

Or if you couldn't play two-hand-touch football without the NFL releasing an official version, and even then you had to follow their exact rules. Otherwise, it's tackle or nothing.

Video game companies tend to prefer to keep as much as possible in-house and heavily protected against pirating, intellectual theft, cheating, and independant servers, which is completely understandable when the product you're trying to market is the game itself, but also inherently limits how many people will ever play it.

As long as league cannot be played without learning a million clunky rules and interactions and a pickup game can't tweak the specifics, the general population will never get a good enough sense of how it works to enjoy watching it. The "sports" model is very specific, and "Esports" fail to meet the basic qualifications.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing, but if Riot really wanted to embrace the spectator-sport aspect of their game, they would have to give up a lot of control over how and when it's played. I very much doubt they're willing to take that risk.

Esports are a fun idea, but the current generation will always have a niche audience - mostly comprised of people that play the game recreationally.