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

Bissin··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

ReginaldBro2 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.

Bissin1 votes

And how would you continue to inject new talent into the league, do you continue to leave teams to sign people on their own? The player base is not large enough to sustain a draft structure similar to other physical sports leagues, nor does it have the relationship to lower leagues that others such as the NFL or NBA have. I don't see a problem with merchandising as it currently is. The teams provide the merchandise they wish to offer to fans. Riot already has a base pay structure in place for the LCS, does it potentially need to be looked at, sure.

My biggest concern is how the region would fair in international competition. As far as other (major) leagues that do franchise go, only 2 have been successful enough to win top honors are (in US men's sports) Baseball (first time in 2017), Basketball and Hockey. Also (in women's sports) Baseball, Football/Soccer, Basketball, and Hockey. In leagues not mentioned (out of the major leagues) have had weak showings compared to others regions of the world. I am concerned that the NALCS may follow suit with this trend (I hope they don't).

All in all I hope this at least brings discussion to if franchising is the only direction the LCS can take to mitigate issues that teams face. However, how it is currently set up is not the most ideal environment.

Bissin1 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 male1 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

Bissin1 votes

• By having a promotion tournament similar to the MSI play in structure you guarantee a Challenger Series team enters the LCS each year. You also do not need to raise the number of teams in the Challenger Series since with this proposal it would be a "Playoff League" just like the GPL is. As much as auto promotion is a desirable outcome for those at the lower levels it is just not the most ideal to raise the level of play. This is seen in other professional sports league that have relegation and promotion systems such as the English Football structure. The teams that auto promote (top 3 from the previous season) tend to stay at the bottom of the table and end up relegating at the end of the season. By forcing teams to play in even when they rank 1st. It destroys the mentality of getting a "free ride" into the LCS, instead you have to earn your earn in a sorts beyond beating the Challenger competition. It in theory promotes constant improvement.

• As for the college level being a community thing. Collegiate sports in the US is a big deal. College players tend to study and perform academically and then perform very well in their respective sport. The same can apply to Esports, however we have not attempted to adapt the collegiate system of sports to Esports yet. If we hold college League of Legends players to an academic standard similar to that of other sports players as well as the standards require for each team it would increase the strength of player coming out of the Campus Series. Scheduling is not a large issue as most of the Campus series matches take place in the evening towards the end of the week. College sports tends to happen anywhere from Thursday - Saturday. Students have ample time to finish schoolwork and still participate in the sport.

• I'm unsure if you understood my proposed structure for the Challenger Series setup so I'll put a simplified version here: Campus Series (Winners of each region promote, drop school tag to prevent disruption from graduation) + Play-in tournament/league Winners -> Regional Leagues (3 for sake of simplicity, Riot can change as it see fit: West, Central, East and includes Canada in regions) Top 2 from each region move on -> Challenger Series (Which is similar to the GPL in this model as a Playoff League) Top 2 move to Promotion tournament ->** Promotion Tournament** (4 teams play for 3 spots in the LCS) -> LCS

To better help, my friend posted on Reddit a similar version (same friend I mentioned here, I helped with this post as well) that may explain the idea better. Hopefully I addressed your points in a satisfactory manner and I hope this helps clarify things.

Reddit Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/6a0tli/2_average_players_idea_for_a_restructured_nalcs/

Ale non è male1 votes

I understand perfectly what do you want to say...and I think you don't fully understand what you were proposing since you talk about European Leagues structures without knowing them YOU are forcing CS orgs to wait at least 1 entire season before entering LCS because...well, you do not have the courage to go one full route (franchising) or the other (let the current system remains), and then they have serious risk to get the work of an entire year f***ked in 1 series and to wait another FULL season before trying again? Sorry, but in the leagues where there is 1 relegation window, at least the worst team of the upper tier is auto-relegated and the best of the power-up auto-promoted, and then there is eventually a promotion/relegation tournament for the other spots involved. You spend money and time for a full season and you beat your current competition for 1 year, you cannot be denied promotion by the league system, because you are putting in danger organization and investors of the CS scene. You talk about English Football League but then forget Leicester run. Or if you want to look at other leagues, look at teams like Sassuolo or Hoffenheim. The reason why teams that auto-promoted get relegated in EU sports system are usually because issues about how money available is allocated in traditional sports league structure, a thing that in League e-sports ecosystem do not happen and still allow newly promoted teams to immediately compete (and history if various EU promoted team throughout the years are an example of that)

This is also a safety clause for the orgs that go down for an unlucky season to be able to go back up next one if they work properly, and make CS less of a black hole where money go wasted and help attracting sponsor in that series now that LCS is stabilizing.

Collegiate series are a joke in e-sports environment. The reason why the whole concept of NCAA works in traditional AMERICAN sports, is because universities can provide the professional support staff and facilities to make players improve that you can't find in any other way in USA system, given that lower level leagues are irrelevant and do not allow to have a proper sports career path (while in EU sports system you can have a pro career playing in 2nd division of a soccer or basket or volleyball league in the major countries), and universities give to these guys a back-up plan in terms of getting degrees, since American universities are expensive unlike European ones, all in exchange of the money they get by TV and sponsorships

But for e-sports It is not required to have these kind of facilities and support staff to develop as players. You need some decent computers and internet connections, a coach and a manager (which can often be the same person at these levels), and you are ready to go, without the time limitations imposed by collegiate rules for training (since in theory you should have the time to also follow courses and do paperworks even if many universites gift courses to their athletes), and thus the college teams can't have a coach following them for the entire time of their weekly training A collegiate series can never train as well as a serious semi-pro/pro team can, they can't compete on equal footing, that's why they will be always worse if you pair them vs pro environment. They can be useful in NA as big community event, to attract some money and media attention to the game and thus increase player base , but they are useless in building a competitive pro environment (yeah, at times some rare talent here and there can get the spot light and get called by a pro team, but these are more the exceptions than the rule)

You are basically copying the EU CS qualifier system, substituting then regular season and playoff CS structure with GPL one...which is not a good or bad idea per se, but you are skipping several steps in proposing it, because what NA lacks right now and what would lack also after your proposal, is all the competitive tournaments underwood that ultimate led Riot to think about that system or GPL one where every country has his own scene(and keep in mind, in EU regional teams have always succumbed so far to International teams so far) Collegiate teams are too weak, and without a decent competitive underwood also regional semi-pro teams in NA would be too weak for pro level, and won't became stronger until you create those semi-pro lower level tournament where teams can develop and improve Your regional leagues would in the end be filled with a ton of low diamond player, as no team aside from top 3-4 in collegiate series have a team full of mid dia or higher players, and without a competitive underwood there would be very few semi-pro/pro orgs with an higher level around in these play-in tournaments, which would turn these regional leagues in very weak ones and not a good training ground for the new talents, and surely not a good training grounds for orgs to get ready to compete and eventually beat LCS teams in the 1st tier league. If you fear about teams that auto-promoted after an entire year of CS getting relegated, immagine what would happen with an org not ready to pro level promoting to LCS with D1-Master level players...

Also, regional leagues in EU are not managed by Riot, but by big third party organizations, who would manage them in NA if nobody is actually doing anything to organizer tournaments right now?

Cries in ADC1 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 Short1 votes

{quoted}

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?

The simplest solution would be to move from a CS "playoff" and develop an actual CS League.

Make it look something like this, a 32 team CS league that offers small payouts per game, via funds from sponsorship and advertisement slots sold. Payouts could be small, $1500 per game, $1000 bonus for the match winner. So if you ran a 20 week league, with a 16 team playoff series, you're talking about $3 million-ish to run the whole series including caster pay, server space, a coordinator crew. Make it totally online except the playoffs, make that a LAN playoffs at Riot's studios, and then run that season kind of starting at the end of the regular season LCS that way the winners (top 2 or top 4 of the CS) would be done just in time for the promotion/relegation tournament to the LCS. Or you could delay the start of the CS season, so have it start half way through the LCS season, that way you could make the relegation/promotion tournament an off season event.

Now the benefit to the CS teams here would be: they get paid actually, a decent amount, and you could guarantee the top 16 teams that made the playoffs spots in the CS for the next year, and then force the bottom 16 into a relegation tournament to get back into the CS. So winning teams could guarantee their survival into the next season.

Pippen The Short1 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.

ModPrandine

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.

Bissin1 votes

To respond for some clarity on some things.

The easiest way to look at franchising vs not franchising is this:

• Franchising is very much more concerned with the organization and investor more so than the player, while it does benefit the player the organizations benefit far more in the long run.

• The way the LCS is currently (to an extent), and my proposal are more concerned about the players and the region improving in play and not as much into the thought of investors need a fully stable platform to invest on. It is very much coming from a player/viewer perspective instead of a financial perspective.

Regarding the buying spots, it would be similar to how Immortals or Echo Fox got into the LCS, their spots were completely bought out and new players were brought in. Granted some of those players were tried and tested on the large stage of the LCS but some were also complete new to it. I'm all for new players entering the pro scene, but I feel they have to "earn it". That's one reason I love the promotion tournament, it really starts to show you who deserves to be in the LCS and who doesn't quite measure up to par just yet.

The Sister Team reason is to avoid the buying spots thing. The most recent example I can think of is C9 Challenger winning a spot solely for the purpose to sell it to somebody wanting to get into the LCS easy. The players ended up staying, but they easily could have been pulled back into the organization and they just run another Challenger team and do it all again. To me that is unprofessional and taints the sportsmanship of the league imo.

The Challenger Series restructure would be more similar to the GPL over in Southeast Asia. The only part that really has the MSI feel is the play-in tournaments and the promotion tournament idea. The rest follows the idea put in place in Southeast Asia very strongly with the regional leagues going to a "playoff league".

Hopefully this made more sense, and I'm glad you found my idea compelling and possible. I just hope it opens a discussion on direction that is best for the LCS in the future.

ModPrandine

Ah okay, that does make a little more sense to me. Thanks.

Bissin1 votes

Glad I could help clear that up

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