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Potential "New" Structure for the LCS, Challenger Series, and beyond

Bissin·5/8/2017, 4:40:43 PM·4 votes·1,207 views

Hey guys, I was chatting with a buddy of mine about the LCS and the Challenger Series when we got to discussing what we thought of as issues with the current system. He then told me about the whole franchising thing that was gaining momentum lately (I had to move and didn't have my computer for a long while). I this post I would like to A) Address the Strengths and Weaknesses to franchising, and B) Offer a "new" structure for the LCS and the Challenger Series that we feel would help strengthen the region in the long term. I wish to point out that points made will not be backed by scientific data per se, but I may reference recent events or other leagues (not just E-Sports). I hope this opens up a discussion into the direction the LCS may take.

A) The Strengths and Weaknesses of Franchising the NALCS

• The strengths of franchising come from an economic and stress standpoint. Franchising allows teams to be ensured a spot after they are accepted through the process established, it eliminates the stress factor of worrying about relegating for poor performance. From an economic standpoint it allows investors to have a more stable platform to invest into. Teams not relegating ensures that you can at least break even on investments as the team has potential to still earn profit simply by being in the LCS.

• However, there are weaknesses to consider with this model. Namely the issue of potentially ending up with a weaker region compare to the rest of the world. Relegation provides a sort of motivator to continue to improve. Weaker teams are moved down to make way for stronger teams in lower divisions. An example of this potentially producing stand out teams include the structure of many football/soccer pyramid structures for their leagues. When it comes to the world of football/soccer the USA is relatively weaker compared to the rest of the world (albeit with imports it is becoming stronger). Weaker teams do not have the motivator of relegation with the franchising method, instead a weak team may not try simply because they get investments and are still "LCS tier", giving us the Cleveland Browns of the LCS. This has potential to gives us a few strong teams that we exclusively see on the playoff stage and the international stage (similar to the nfl with the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers).

While franchising has the ability to ensure stability to the league it may also lead to a weaker region in the long term. In the next section I will lay out the potential for an overhaul of the LCS and the Challenger Series.

B) "New" Structure of the League

• The biggest point of this proposal revolves around relegation. Currently we have two relegation periods in a year, that seems to be too frequent to allow teams to improve their mistakes. Many sports that have relegation models do so once a year, this allows a team to have a slump and bounce back to prove they should not be relegated. This still removes the teams that are not performing up to scruff and allows break out teams from the Challenger Series to have a longer time to assimilate to the LCS environment. This also reduces the stress associated to relegation for both players and staff as you have a longer period to attempt to improve.

• The second point to make is the issue with buying spots. Buying spots has the potential to produce super star teams (Immortals their first season). However, it reduces the mentality of "I need to play my way in". While the player still needs to impress, they need only impress a wealthy investor enough to earn a spot on their team. Then that invest can inject these players into the LCS in a fashion that defeats the idea of the ladder system. Buying spots honestly should not be a thing because the drawbacks can be devastating (and weaken the region).

• Another issue currently in the Challenger Series is the "Sister Team". Is having lower teams for practice squads/potential first team players a bad thing? No of course not, the problem is where these teams play. Going back to football/soccer, clubs have reserve teams for players that are being groomed for the first team. These reserve teams generally are not allowed to achieve promotion into the same league as their parent team, or in some countries these teams are not allowed into fully professional leagues. This allows teams to provide their players with play time while they are not starters. In order to better utilize this idea later in this section I'll address where I believe we may put reserve teams for LCS organizations. Another issue with this revolves around the substitutes slot. 1 sub per submitted roster limits the need for reserve teams, thus making Challenger Teams for these organizations something you promote with then sell. To make reserve teams have value raising the number of subs per submitted roster to 3 may be a solution. This allows the players from the reserve team to have a chance to place on the big stage as well as allowing teams to have more strategies and more solutions to poor play during a match. the preventing promotion also would eliminate the financial value side of reserve teams.

• Now with those points covered, lets move onto the proposal of the new structure. Following an idea of promotion pyramids. I propose the LCS stays relatively the same in structure. The main change(s) are the relegation frequency mentioned above and the use of relegating the lowest ranking team. I understand in the past it was not the most popular thing, but with the less frequent relegation it allows a better sense of the lowest ranked team not being able to consistently perform. With this comes the promotion tournament. Instead of guaranteeing a Challenger team a spot in the LCS you still have the 4 team tournament, however you have 3 teams promote to the LCS (Similar to the playing stage of MSI). This ensures a new injection of talents and playstyles each year for the LCS.

• Now that we have addressed the LCS Changes proposed lets move to the Challenger Series changes proposed. To do this I will start with a "bottom-up" approach. The college series could be integrated into the current system. A portion of the next tier being the winners in these leagues, The college series would take place at least half a season before the start of the next season to allow for the next portion to function correctly. Taking inspiration from Southeast Asia, I propose a system of regional leagues that take place towards the beginning of the season, these leagues would consist of a portion of the regions from the college series ad well as teams that make it through qualifiers (similar to how teams make it into the Challenger Series now). These regional leagues would be one per region and the winners would move to the Challenger Series. The Challenger Series would effectively become similar to the GPL, which is the way Southeast Asia decides its league winner and representative at MSI and the Wildcard Qualifiers. The Challenger Series would become this sort of "playoff series" where the winners of each region would play to earn the top two spots in the league. At the end of each season it would start again with the college series playing then the regional then the Challenger Series. This would promote a constantly improving mentality, it also allows multiple strategies to develop as each region may play slightly different from one another. This proposal for the Challenger Series would in the long term promote a better caliber of player leading to a stronger regional in international play.

As this is only a proposal it is not official and I would love to hear others ideas on this topic. I will gladly help clarify anything that may be confusing as the question arise. As a final point this does not dismiss franchising as a direction Riot can take, rather this hopes to provide another option that two players brainstormed up that is meant to improve teams and the gameplay.

EDIT: After further discussion we thought about implementing a signing period setup similar to football/soccer seasons. During the season there are 2 signing periods 1 at the beginning/end of the year and 1 around the middle of the season. This discourages leaving a team for another when you are not in this period, potentially leaving your team scrambling for a replacement. It also can discourage the organization dumping a player because they may need the spot filled until this period to find a replacement. Your thoughts on this idea are very much welcomed and encouraged.

The friend I mention earlier posted a similar version on Reddit, it further explains things that may not be as clear here you can find that post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/6a0tli/2_average_players_idea_for_a_restructured_nalcs/

I thank you for taking the time to read the entire post and I hope you have a great day.

13 Comments

ReginaldBro5/10/2017, 5:50:48 AM2 votes

I think you can do franchising if you restructure payment. All merchandise has to be licensed through RIOT and RIOT aggressively works with teams to create/design and market merchandise. I mean there should be a tab for team merchandise right in the client under the Store tab. So Pro teams get a base salary of X dollars and that rate should just be bottom basic operational money. The rest comes from how they perform in the League. So basically if your team is shit you are not making money and eventually have to sell to a new investor.

Bissin5/9/2017, 9:47:39 PM1 votes

I really hope you guys will leave your opinions. Does my idea make sense? Could you see it working? Is basing it off of other already established leagues of sports a problem? I would love to hear your answers to these and more questions.

Ale non è male5/10/2017, 6:02:48 PM1 votes

About pro league structure, If you want to reduce relegation windows, you HAVE to guarantee the bottom LCS to relegate and the top CS team to promote, because the CS team would have earned that the first position throughout a tournament as long/almost as long as the LCS one (obviously you have to increase the number of CS teams because a year long tournament with only 6 teams make little sense)

Then you can also do a relegation tournament to allow extra CS teams to earn a spot, but it is mandatory for the health of both the LCS and the Challenger Scene that their effort is rewarded after suffering for an entire year of playing in a league with low exposition and low revenue at the moment and thus whoever win CS get autopromoted, because work the entire year in CS and top it to then lose everything 1 single playoff series (see Schalke in EU CS) or a team pulling off a TL-Doublelift move at last second would be unfair and basically equal to franchising without telling it to CS teams that would then bleed money to reach an impossible goal, and the same fairness should be showed towards the low level LCS team that would fight for survival all year to avoid last place only be relegated in a similar way as said above by a 10th team that add a player at last second or got a lucky road in relegation tournament

About everything else, to be honest NA has to create some competitive underwood detached from the idea of collegiate series (which level is too low and only exist as community event to attract some tv sponsorship and fan base, and will always be) and just have a series of medium sized tournament organized by organizations like MLG or similar, played at local con/exhibition/fairs to develop young talent that will then structure themselves into organizations or will be picked by pre-existing organization sorting the situation later by theirselves... it is uesless to make a bucnh amateurs teams (because college teams for study requirements will never have a schedule that will allow them to compete with the top 3-4 teams outside of challenger or that are bottom challengers, and the best players out of there will be picked by pro organizations so they will never retain the talent to compete ) vs other amateurs teams and expect to develop a consistent amount of players ready to go pro, you have to recreate the competitive underwood of the best regions (see how many pro and semi pro teams are there in KR, EU or there were in CN before the franchising announcement) to get a similar amount of talent available

Cries in ADC5/11/2017, 3:04:46 PM1 votes

I totally agree the one team that loses the promotion tourney, that's a huge blow; especially if they were in the regionals through to promos. That would be devastating for a team. What's your proposal to remedy that?

Pippen The Short5/11/2017, 8:29:30 PM1 votes

I'm going to preface this by saying that if you're going to talk about a "new LCS/CS" structure, you absolutely have to consider the financial aspects of it all. It would be impossible to alter the LCS unless you could prove a significant marginal increase in profits for Riot. Profits is what makes the world go round. So in terms of altering structure and function, you have to prove one of two things: the new structure must be simple to implement and be easier to run, or it must greatly increase profits. Which unfortunately, I don't believe what you're proposing here does that.

I do agree that there is a need to develop some stability for CS teams, to grind through 2 different playoffs and then lose it all in a single series and then have to start from the bottom again the following year is definitely frustrating.

I also agree that the relegation tournaments need to be reduced to 1.

However, if you're going to reduce the relegation tournaments, then there has to be a consolidation of the seasons. Get rid of the spring split and summer split style schedule. You could reformat MSI as like a spring open tournament, some big international invitational to kick off the international league season.

Ultimately there's a few problems with the LCS/CS system right now, which all boil down a lack of stability due to a lack of guaranteed funds. Which could be solved via a standard franchise run league that sells broadcasting rights. But there's a problem with this model, Riot gains nothing by handing over the LCS to a franchise run system. There might be some money to gain through this, but Riot would have to relinquish the vast majority of its control over the league; something that they are clearly not motivated by.

ModPrandine5/9/2017, 11:26:48 PM

I gotta say I like the sound of this. Now I can't speak too much of A) as fiances and franchises and the like are not my areas of expertise but I will say that it sounds interesting at the very least.

Regarding B), I like the idea of reducing the number of relegation periods from 2 to 1. If the Team Dragon Knights conundrum proved anything is that teams can really struggle if most of their players are struggling with Visa issues and the like, and while one could make the argument that teams need to make sure that their sub players if any are also well equipped and trained to work with the team in things like that pop up, giving the teams more time to play would potentially encourage better improvement and performance while not being as worried about being relegated for having one bad split. As for buying spots, can't say that I entirely agree with that either, but again I don't know much about that so I can't speak much regarding it. I also don't think having "sibling teams" is bad either, but if it's true that CS teams can only have 1 sub instead of 3 then that should be changed to encourage teams to give other players a chance.

As for your CS restructure idea it would basically follow the format of the MSI Play-in stage correct? If so then I can get behind that if implemented properly. I can't speak much to your idea with the regionals so someone with more experience in that area can debate it with you.

Overall though I like most of your ideas and think that they are feasible enough to be potentially implemented into the LCS and CS leagues.