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Six Months Ago...

ChompyWulf·5/8/2018, 3:42:15 AM·1 votes·621 views

Franchising hit NA with the force of a Sion ult, and just as suddenly affected everyone on impact. NV was swapped for rival organization Optic, longtime team Dig was gone, the unpredictable Phoenix1 survived relegation for naught, and a week after their Worlds meltdown it became public Immortals was denied. This was the shocker. Was it because of a big monetary commitment to Overwatch? Maybe because they were planning an Esports dedicated viewing venue that could take ticket sales from the LCS? Was it because they were expanding to rival MOBA DOTA2? Was it because they were still largely backed financially from one source? No real answer is known. Most Riot apologists point to a lack of sponsorship and relying on venture capitalist money.

Fast forward. Three of the new NA franchises are largely backed by their NBA owner. One has a website that lists two sponsors. Another has none mentioned. One even lacks it's own website. Meanwhile Immortals have landed two big sponsorships in Mountain Dew and K-Swiss in just the last month, becoming the first Esports team with a shoe deal (and not just from a small niche online store).

Can we finally get some fans admitting that Riots decision to cut out Immortals is looking more and more suspect and inexplicable?

2 Comments

Shadowatom5/8/2018, 5:40:15 AM1 votes

To be entirely honest most people already have seen it as suspect considering Riot brought in multiple NBA teams and iirc it made 9 out of the 10 LCS teams backed by teams/people associated with the NBA. Immortals at the time also was kind of overextending in many branches of Esports with CS:GO, Dota 2, League, and OWL. Not to mention building their campus site for the players. It was seeming like a lot of money was being spent with very little coming in. Fast forward to today, and I'm certain IMT would still be around if they had these deals going for them, unfortunately they came too late in terms of the franchising deal.

As for the NBA teams, they're still probably trying to figure out how to run and manage an Esports team. Remember NRG? Their decisions in terms of management were horrible. I recall a story when they decided to build the team around GBM, their GM told him after they signed the 4 players that they were building the team around him (Ohq was the only decent one iirc)... And people like that more than likely got their positions because they had connections, not due to their expertise. I assume NBA teams are struggling with the same problem in trying to sort through who actually knows the scene vs who's just got connections.