An analysis of LCS and why it exists

ajsadler · 6時間前

It's not a coincidence that the strongest brands in gaming are almost all related to League in some way: SKT, KT, TSM, CLG, Fnatic, Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Team Liquid, OG, etc.

Cherry picking much?

Evil Geniuses's brand recognition doesn't come from their LoL roster. I'd say Liquid is debatable too with their teams in Dota2 and SC2, as well as Fnatic with their CSGO team would still be one of the biggest brands without LoL.

And you left out teams who developed their strong brands outside of LoL too like NiP, Na'Vi, Tempo Storm, Alliance, Secret, Newbee, MVP, Virtus Pro, EnVyUs, compLexity, Mousesports, OpTic, Faze, etc.

Yes some of those have had a LoL team at one time or another but their strong brands come from other games.

That's not to discount the rest of your argument. I just had to highlight that one bit.

JinnAxel · 7時間前

It's not a coincidence that the strongest brands in gaming are almost all related to League in some way: SKT, KT, TSM, CLG, Fnatic, Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Team Liquid, OG, etc.

Wut. All of those except TSM, CLG, and Cloud9 were eSports juggernauts (of their respective scenes and areas) before League was even a concept. The one exception is Origen, which is still a baby org.

If anything Riot needed those orgs to be invested in their competitive scene for League to even become an esport. And do you know what TSM, Cloud9, and CLG did immediately after becoming a big brand? The same the older companies did: expand to other eSports.

And the expansion model has been used by every new org (except for Origen, which is surprising) like TempoStorm, Echo Fox, NRG, Luminosity, etc.

What's obvious is that League is an incredibly difficult eSport to break into now. Orgs need to be ready to invest a very substantial amount of money into a League team, even at the Challenger level let alone an LCS team. And a lot of that comes from the fact that Riot doesn't want to share pieces of the pie to third parties.

Yes, LCS is about the fans, but without the owners, the LCS wouldn't be a thing. Your entire point is that Riot is using the LCS as a giant commercial for League of Legends, the owners are saying that the scene can't grow anymore because Riot controls the majority of the money, and the development of the game. You have to be obscenely rich to be able to buy into League esports.

TL;DR: Riot is trying to market League as the biggest eSport, as well as market the LCS in order to bolster RP sales. Riot need orgs much more than orgs need Riot. Riot prevents League from growing as an eSport because they want the money from their LCS advertisement campaign.

EDIT: The final thing I want to mention is I also believe in a League system, the only gripe I have is that it's been made very evident that Riot isn't a neutral arbitrator when it comes to rulings, balance decisions, and the economic development of the league and all parties involved.

ThatLexxyFellow · 9時間前

Seriously, well put. Tryndamere's biggest mistake is rushing his comments without thinking of wording, which can be a symptom of passion just as much as frustration or rudeness. On a personal note, his point about 'making patches more bloody and exciting' holds very true for my mother, who is no computer geek and can't even touch type, but absolutely LOVES watching the LCS when the net speed allows - and over the last two or three years, has grown to understand a lot about the game despite never playing it.

HalloweenheadEUW · 3時間前

The LCS is designed to get people to play League, while the NFL is designed to make money.

Riot wants people to play League so that they can make money off the game. They are a business and owned by an even bigger business. Now sure they like people playing their game but in the end they want their customers to spend money on RP so it stays profitable for them. The difference between the NFL and the LCS is that the NFL tries to make money through sponsors and the LCS tries to make money through people playing their game. The NFL can't do the latter since they don't own the the intellectual property rights to football but Riot does for league.

Ythapa · 5時間前

I'm tilted that you're putting SKT/KT as organizations that are primarily related to League.

These Korean organizations existed waaaaay before League ever was a thing. They were funding big, well-established, and popular Starcraft progaming teams. They don't owe League anything for their continued popularity. They already had it from the SCBW days with huge stars like Boxer/Iloveoov/Nal_rA/Flash/etc.

Why even put them in that list? Hell, you can also add Fnatic to that list since Fnatic as an organization used to have vaunted CS teams in eSports past.

The only teams that you should include are teams directly borne from the League scene which is more Origen/CLG/TSM.

PleasantNA · 9時間前

Great post. I dont think Riot gets enough props for actually establishing + maintaining the LCS. A lot of league fans take it for granted.

Sky_chu · 4時間前

Had to sign up just to absolutely hurl out my two cents.

Your argument regarding the NFL model and how it is differentiated because it doesn't sell footballs seems somewhat amiss. The revenue streams for Riot are largely (if not solely) through Micro-transactions in LoL. The LCS is a marketing tool for this, the more people that watch, the more people play, the more people buy and so on and so forth.

The NFL makes a lot of its money through broadcasting rights. The more people watch, the more potential advertising revenue, the more paid for Broadcasting rights. Instead of Micro-transactions the NFL advertises for it's own product, the NFL.

The more viewers the more money, regardless of whether its LCS or NFL.

The relevance being that the NFL pays large portions of the salary cap's each year (not american don't know exactly how much). The success of the league i.e More Viewers -> Higher broadcasting rights flows through the NFL to the teams reasonably directly. In LoL however this hasn't been seen & the fact the Tryndamere appears to be suggesting this is the duty of Owners is concerning.

In terms of patching, i agree with your sentiment that what's good for the fans is good for LCS, the issue seems to be here that whats good for the LCS, does not seem to be that good for the owners. It's good for the Owners in terms of Revenue outside the LCS but the risk to their businesses (Given reactions of owners) appears to outweigh this.

Supposedly Riot spent $30m+ on a LCS setup, wasn't riot esimated to have made $1.6B last year? Context

MallFoodSucks · 6時間前

Here's 1 thing people don't realize: the LCS system is what grew this community. This sub alone has 860k+ subs, compared to 293k on Dota2 and 406k for CSGO. The truth is LCS, and everything around it, is what drew fans into this system. If LoL ran laissez faire, this game would not be as big as it is today. These teams wouldn't have a 860k+ audience to post things to everyday. They won't have 763k people following Bjergsen on Twitter, compared to 386k for Dendi. They won't have 14 of the top 20 most marketable e-sports players in the world based on FB/Twitter, and 10 of the top 13.

I understand the team's frustration. To them, it's about the bottom line and surviving. But Riot's gamble to build a structure, a league, put in the time and effort to run everything (essentially creating a brand new business division - something Valve will never do) - that gamble is what created the entire LoL scene and made it as strong as it is now.

Patch changes suck? Sure. But the viewers, the fans who support you, all hated lane swaps. Are you going to throw away a 860k+ western fan base just because you want the 5 players on your team to not work so hard? League of Entitlement right there.

ljosquaredl · 9時間前

Quality post. I can't think of any other developer who would drop what was it, $30 million on their esports scene for season 3? That's a huge investment for a company, and it's one of many reasons why lolesports got so big. They're putting top dollar on everything while alot of other scenes even revolve around online tournaments and gameplay to make it work as consistently as Riot does for League.

I liked the "tennis model" as you describe it, it's worked well for esports over the years. I do prefer this method more tho because of consistency in everything especially quality. Hearthstone, Halo, CoD, CSGO, etc, so much inconsistency in quality between events sometimes, I always know LCS will look and sound amazing tho everytime I tune in, and I like that. Also the scheduling is WAY easier to follow.

It could use tweaks tho, every system could use tweaks. From amount of road events to org/player issues to shorter seasons or anything you can think of, no system is perfect it could always use tweaks to make it work better.

daneagles · 9時間前

I think this entire issue comes down to figuring out how to solve one of the oldest questions in eSports -- do you balance the game around the average player, or the best player? This is a really hard thing to do properly, so I do give Riot quite a bit of slack in that department, but it does sometimes feel that the updates introduced just exist to make games more "exciting" or entertaining to viewers. From your point of view, this makes perfect sense -- more exciting games draws more viewers, which creates more new players who will spend money on League, which will eventually trickle down to LCS teams. While that may be true, I completely get where Regi's coming from regarding patch releases -- making a gigantic change just before the biggest event of the year and then expecting players to be able to learn and adapt must be unbelievably frustrating to teams, especially after spending months preparing certain styles for Worlds.

It's definitely a tough problem and I don't think there's an easy solution, but it's good to see it getting discussed.

CelestialDrive · 7時間前

Good points, but:

"All esports are like this, and no real sports are like this."

This is absolutely dead wrong. Esports environments are usually managed by the community, not the developer. They are born from the desire to compete and to share, and the players and event organizers have no financial stake in the success of the game proper (it's more about viewership numbers, ads, and more recently betting sites).

Nowadays, developers meddling in with the scene is pretty normal, and something to be grateful for because the goals don't usually clash and it's a good cycle of money for exposure that feeds itself. But noone, not Valve, not Blizzard, has gone to the lenghts Riot has in managing their esports scene. No developer has outright shut down (barring IEM) every major event not directly managed by them on the west.

Riot's hands-on approach to LoL esports allowed them to steer the league directly and to schedule a full league format instead of a smattering of events, but also removed any outsider input on how LoL esports were managed. And so, regardless of the goodwill or backgrounds of the people involved on the esports branches of Riot, the scene was fully controlled by the developer. And the main goal of the developer is ultimately to get more people to play their game.

So no, this is not "like every other esport". Riot's takeover of the scene is a massive outlier. I am not qualified or informed enough to jugde if the results are for better or worse, but this is not standard.

farmiyolo · 9時間前

Thanks for this post, clears up a lot of the confusion surrounding the situation. TIL. :)

keepitzen · 6時間前

Maybe I missed where you mentioned it (I'm sick and a little wooooo on meds), but the LCS doesn't totally go by the NFL model. In the NFL the team owners are the ones who own and control the League. They have control over broadcast rights and such. LCS owners have none of that. Monte talks about it in his Economics of LCS video.

Good on Riot/TenCent for throwing tons of money into it, but that doesn't make them right about how things should be run. Especially now with how much more developed the scene has become.

pinkshrub · 9時間前

good post :), hope some discussion crops around it and some constructive and educational content comes out from the people who are involved in these shenanigans. I enjoy game theory and it really suprised me that the first section in my textbook in school was about league design and set-up. Interesting how back in the old days of yore, pre-VODs/twitch/streamin/broadcasts, ticket sales were a large indication of competitive quality-better games=>more tickets sold. So the idea of 3rd party leagues was to establish a collective (made of team owners) to try and optimize ticket sales by controlling league design(creating more compelling match-ups, storylines, relegation/promotion, etc.) to generate better ticket sales. This is all awesome because, as you say, overlord rito doesn't operate with ticket sales as their no. 1 priority. Ask any involved NFL owner what the gate is for any individual game and they can probably tell you off the top of their head. I doubt that outside of worlds and maybe finals rito doesn't care about ticket sales too much.

waaarp · 1時間前

That was pretty clear and instructive, thank you.

_rethe · 59分前

I agree with you my friend

Strider08000 · 5時間前

Pitchforks down; that was illuminating.

mybankpin · 2時間前

I find myself wishing you were just trolling, but with the number of people agreeing I am beginning to think this is a serious post. As such, I shall respond with a serious post.

To start, Riot took a huge risk in building the LCS. What risk? There was proof of concept a LONG time ago with other esport leagues in Korea. There was proof that there was a desire for a pro LoL scene from the turn out at the various tournaments prior to the first season of LCS. There was about as little risk as it gets given how big the game was at the time. Roughly 3 million peak concurrent in Oct. 2012, with 32 million playing monthly. This was in no sense a particularly huge risk.

You then say that the risk handsomely profits TSM. TSM was a marquee name in LoL before LCS became a thing. They were the ONLY team to receive an invite to IPL5. As for how the LCS structure benefits them, it doesn't appear to. TSM needs to consistently shell out top dollar for the best players while not receiving much help from the League. They apparently don't receive much from the summoner icon sales. There is not much profit to be had from LCS directly. Sure, they have a huge following, which translates in to merchandise sales, but I contend once more that they'd still be a huge success regardless of LCS format.

On to how other esports lose them money while coming out stronger in the LCS despite multiple slumps. The only place TSM would lose money is through merchandising and a slight loss from player salary. The LoL stipend is 25k per player iirc.

Brief pause to talk about how teams are likely making their money. Merchandising aside, there's the obvious sponsorship deals. They net nice money, but the short amount of stage time on LCS with minimum exposure on the jersey is likely not enough to appease most sponsors. That's why there are streams with banners and what not. Sponsors probably aren't looking at LCS teams and thinking "Well damn, let's pay for 2.5x5 inches of space on a team jersey that will be shown for roughly 30 minutes max per week. #worth"

"the strongest brands in gaming are almost all related to League...: SKT, KT..." SKT and KT were already the largest teams in Korea prior to League's release. The LCS has literally NOTHING to do with their popularity nor how strong their brands are. To say it's because of League is beyond insulting.

TSM owes the LCS absolutely nothing. The LCS owes TSM everything. They are the team that generates the most views. They are by far the most popular team. They are by far the team that generates the most hype and discussion. They are the Dallas Cowboys, but they actually fucking win.

As to team owners getting uppity about "patch changes," of course they can. Riot themselves spewed that bullshit line of "competitive integrity." Not to mention it only improves the viewing experience of some people. There are people that liked seeing more champion diversity.

Hosting esports can not be a money sink. That's just bad fucking business. The board would have fired the shit out of you if you were operating at a loss.

Team owners that have branched out to other games can continue to do well regardless of how well LoL does. They can continue to do well if they have done a good job of branding. Their livelihood does not depend on League of Legends.

SHlTTY_MS_PAINT · 9時間前

TSM owes its very existence to League of Legends.

This is a 2 way street. As much as TSM owes it's existence to League, League owes is popularity to TSM

Reginald & TSM along with CLG back in early season 2 are the main reasons League exploded the way it did

thepromisedgland · 4時間前

This is a false dichotomy. I don't know where you get the idea that the competitive scene would lose its advertising value if Riot collected outside sponsor revenue or didn't exercise absolute control over it, and I certainly don't see how you get from that assertion to the conclusion that all other parties to the venture should just sit down, shut up, and accept whatever peanuts Riot feels like giving them.

iamcdr · 2時間前

LCS is about making for money for Riot, not about fans. It's an user aquisition tool, it's a monetization tool, it's an engagement tool. It's an extremely cheap investment considering the amount of value it brings for Riot. They probably get 100% ROI just from Worlds champions and Championship skins.

Decisions like lane swap patch aren't made "for the fans", they are made for the metrics. If the viewership numbers drop, they have to do something. Make a botlane stream, change the meta so the game "looks more fun", it has nothing to do with what fans actually want to happen. Riot doesn't give a flying fuck about "fans", it's all about excel spreadsheets and numbers for their analytical team.

I'm not even gonna comment on biggest brands being related to League, since it shows complete ignorance. SKT and KT were powerhouses, sponsored by the biggest Korean brand long before League even existed. EG, Fnatic, TL, all the Chinese teams have a much longer history.

Riot is not even close to "paying TSM to exist". The money they give to LCS teams is laughable compared to sponsor contracts. They don't pay their casters even nearly enough. All they care about is ROI and it's insane. Revenue split with teams? Fuck that, they get our pennies, that's enough for them. Any kind of security for people who invest millions of dollars to promote your game? Fuck that, we prefer the "you're cool, you're cool, we don't like you, get the fuck out of the LCS, you have 2 weeks to sell the team".

It boggles my mind how anyone even remotely close to League can say that Riot does anything for the fans. Like what, the replay system? Sandbox mode? Ranked system, that is designed to cater to people who care about it, instead of retention and engagement tool for casuals?

The LCS is made for Riot to make profit out of it, but it's dependant on owners and their teams. They are the ones that bring people in and ultimately bring in the money. They are the ones creating value for Riot. Nobody watches LCS to listen to Jatt or look at Phreak, they want to see Bjergsen, Doublelift and Perkz. What do they get in return, besides laughable amounts of money every split? If there was any kind of revenue share Regi would actually make millions, but now he has to rely on sponsors and others esports (that bring way more money in, ask Ocelote). LCS is the main marketing channel for Riot and it's super cheap considering it's reach. Other F2P companies drop more money every month on marketing, than Riot does on esports every year.

There isn't a reality in which Tryndamere statement makes sense. It's a slap to the face of every owner and basically saying "shut the fuck up and keep making us money, while he do whatever the fuck we want".

falaran · 3時間前

Do you work for riot? This is a baffling post riddled with inaccurate assumptions and wild speculation

Shalmy · 7時間前

You are wrong since the start of your postulate.

Every esport in the world other than the LCS uses some form of the "tennis model".

The most successful and respected esport scene prior to SC2 and LoL rising was Starcraft 1 in Korea. Because of the nature of the game (solo game), there was a few other tournaments beside the main league (2 officials solo tournaments by KeSPA partners OGN and MBC, one by a rival, GOM, and the WCG) but basically there was only one league and one organizer, the almighty KeSPA.

Back in 2008-2010, every esport fan wanted his game to become like SC1 in Korea but there was simply not enough money in other games to do that.

You seems to forget that The Champions was a thing more than one year before the start of the LCS. Since it was created by OGN, who worked for more than a decade with KeSPA on SC1, they did what they had always do : a closed league system. It was a huge success and everybody here in the West wanted the same thing.

We already had those discussions on the future of LoL in 2011-2012 when there was no leagues and the major consensus back then was that to have a healthy and stable scene, leagues where needed. Teams where too instables in an open tournaments model.

Finally, you comparison to traditional sports forget one important point. If the "tennis model" is the norm for solo sports, its absolutely not the case for team sports. They all have a league system. And LoL is a League sport.

Your analysis on why things are what they are now is biased because you have absolutely no historic perspective on it. LCS haven't been created ex nihilo. Esport has an history.

Partierdude · 4時間前

A simple way of looking at it.

The LCS is just one big advertising budget to riot.. They decide they want to spend £10 million on advertising so that's the budget for salaries tournaments casters etc.

Then the prize money can be seen as a bonus to teams who have done well 'commision' for 'selling' the game to all the fans who now want to play because they watched the final. The reward to the players is the prize money.

mbr4life1 · 4時間前

Well I'll counter that some of those brands such as Fnatic existed before LoL and were on the bleeding edge of esports.

Noxsolum · 3時間前

There are problems with this model and that's the thing that LCS owners are upset about. While LCS is great for the fans and great for the game, it's not doing anything for the teams and making them sustainable. You give examples of the strongest brands but a few of them were either already an established brands or have since died off in the LoL era. OG almost got relegated, SKT and KT were already an established brand.

There needs to be a way for teams to preserve their spot and for them to get more reliable sponsors. I'm not exactly the most versed in business models but surely even if you panda to the fans with it, if your teams are not being able to play or big names (E.g. Dignitas get relegated then there will be nothing to follow for the average fan.

pedrog94s · 3時間前

That tennis reference makes no sense. And most of the teams made name for themselves out of league. But the rest I can agree on.

Vaynester · 3時間前

this

ekoee · 2時間前

May be an unpopular suggestion, but I wouldn't be opposed to ads showing during countdowns or pauses if it allows Riot to make more money. Hell, they could even paint sponsors on SR. They could use a percentage of that money to pay out to teams based on viewership of games. It doesn't costs viewers anything to watch an ad during a break.

Good teams would get paid more by Riot because of their overwhelming fanbase, and it doesn't hurt Riot too much because they would pay not only a set salary but also based on views per game (thus quantifying their investment by monetizing viewership, rather than how many people bought skins after a match).

This also makes it so that teams don't get stagnant, because there is an end goal besides Worlds; if you don't have views you lose out on money. Better teams will always get more people watching. Or, you could help fan favorites (think Raider Nation) not leave the scene completely.

Relegations could even work the same, if they could implement this into the Challenger Series. Teams with massive fan bases that get relegated (probably would be crazy rare) would still be able to get paid out on viewership, helping them build an infrastructure and a core group of players to make it back to the LCS. They wouldn't lose completely everything.

With the introduction of the scouting opportunities by Riot, they could make a change to create a pro scene that focuses on viewership rather than getting people to play the game. New talent could be cultivated into a much more stable scene in terms of infrastructure and financing. The more people that watch and the more exiting the games, the more people will want to play.

ShinyGoomyz · 1時間前

I would not be playing league right now if it were not for TSM

DeadlyFlourish · 59分前

The aim of LCS is also to make money, indirectly. By getting more people to play league they're getting more people to spend money on their stuff :)

headphones1 · 31分前

This involves zero investment from the game studio, but also means they have zero control, and the scene is accordingly much less stable for it.

Yeah, tell that to /r/GlobalOffensive who have been up in arms for and against Valve who have recently decided to remove in-game coaches for large events they sponsor and exert control over.

joaojmc · 12分前

It's not a coincidence that the strongest brands in gaming are almost all related to League in some way: SKT, KT, TSM, CLG, Fnatic, Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Team Liquid, OG, etc.

TSM, CLG, OG and Cloud 9 were born to League. All others were giants even before League was born.

teams make way more off of League than other esports

Oy? Dota... CS:GO... No? Sure then.

dabulge · 11分前

TSM doesn't owe Riot shit. If anything Riot owes TSM. Tsm is the biggest league of legends brand probably in the game at least in the na lcs the bigger of the two lcs leagues. Their streamers have the most viewers they bring the most views to lcs! That literally brings direct revenue to Riot games because they have complete broadcast control over their game. DL and BJERG have 20k views every time they stream. The lowest TSM streamer gets like an average of 14k viewers throughout their whole stream. That is so much exposure to different skins and to the game. Am I missing something, or is this post still completely out of touch. "Petty Shit like revenue sharing"!!!??? WHATT?! Riot made a billion dollars in revenue last year, and it's petty for owners to want revenue sharing for a game that they help promote? This is just crazy.

peachtime · 4分前

ok no shit, but it doesnt really excuse how disconnected and delusional his comment was lol

syrinxspirit · 3時間前

It's kinda funny to see a post like this where some dude makes claims based off of zero knowledge inside the scene as far as where the money is made and who is getting paid what, meanwhile Monte posts a video that contradicts a lot of this having known plenty from inside the league.

Always nice to see the subreddit upvoting posts that's aren't true.

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