Balancing Decisions - Just Questions for @Maple and @RIOT

Okay so, I went and grabbed a nap, and woke up with a huge question that wouldn't leave me alone. I remembered something that Maple said that seems... off... to me:

[{quoted}](name=Maple Nectar,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=1UbZdRKB,comment-id=0018,timestamp=2018-04-11T21:58:02.750+0000)

To start off, you're 100% correct in expressing frustration when you feel the game you play is negatively impacted by balance decisions that are made focused on the highest levels of play. You're opinion is one that's certainly shared by a large group of players, but it's also only one of several of the demographics that make up our playerbase that we're trying to serve with both solo queue and the professional scene. Let me elaborate:

Group A - Just wants to play League doesn't care about the pro scene Group B - Enjoys League, tunes in occasionally to watch the pro scene (usually for big things like playoff finals, MSI, Worlds) Group C - Enjoys League, watches LCS religiously (every weekend they make time to watch every game or atleast the games with their favorite teams. Group D - Used to play League, doesn't anymore, but still watches the LCS because they like the pro scene Group E - Never played League before, but I friend told them it was pretty cool and got them to watch a few games.

He said this in relation to a post about balancing around LCS instead of the playerbase. So I got to wondering.

"That's 81,000,000 people every month playing this game." ( https://www.unrankedsmurfs.com/blog/players-2017 )

Okay, so we have around 81 million players connecting every month to roam around League of Legends, and that was an estimate based off of previous math given by RIOT. Well, then how many players watched the finals last year?

https://imgur.com/a/56C7E < Screenshot of Youtube's opening page for the LCS Finals

Around 700k watched the Grand Finals. Let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say a million watched the final game (oddly difficult to find, but then again I'm sleepy). Most of the rest of the championship had from 140k-400k on average. This trend extends across near all tournaments that are live streamed.

Doing a bit of mathematical trickery, let's see...

81,000,000 > 1,000,000

And on the forums we find most of the player base support the idea, in one way or another, that something is just -off- with how the game is being balanced. Not criticizing anyone here, just stating a trend.

So, if the argument is that Pro Play is balanced in priority over just players, and yet there are 80,000,000 more players than people who watch live streams -every month-.... Something seems... off about this theory.

@Riot?

Edit: In Fact there are only 2.5 million players even subscribed to the e-sports channel for notifications of tournaments.