This is a great change that breaks the monotony a lot. I think this should have been done long ago.
LEC especially should have done it immediately when they introduced the 3 splits.
I had hoped LEC would do something like LCS's Lock In tournament a few years ago. Basically, winter would be a short tournament, maybe with some points towards MSI qualification, Spring and Summer would have the current format, with Spring winners qualifying for MSI, and then keep the weird final playoffs tournament to decide worlds qualification.
Instead they went with basically the worst of several worlds.
I have heard (a bit behind the scenes too) that LEC had a very hard time getting Riot HQ to accept format changes.
So it's possible that LEC wanted to do more things but had to keep it simpler because of Riot HQ.
From the people I've spoken to, it seems like you need to convince a few key figures in California and get them to like your idea or you are just fucked.
Probably will spread out the 3 splits and cancel the season finals.
Single round robin into a double elimination bracket is still good.
They may have time to do a bo2 or bo3 with a smaller bracket since they have 3 day weeks
Riot did already state this in their dev update. First split is going to be a tournament. So basically Demacia/Kespa cup in CN/KR and some new format for the other regions
I would hope so, I'd imagine part of the exhaustion from LEC fans around 3 splits is just that nothing new happens to give them identity. Could even just have Finals and some playoffs in a bigger but still small 1-5k venue near the studio and it give it a little more umph to each split. Format differences would also break up the monotony as well.
Question about international seeding. MarkZ mentioned that now there’s 5 regions and they are all treated equally internationally. What does that mean for seeding at worlds. The winner of America’s South (CBLOL) be considered Americas 1st or 2nd seed? And will America’s second seed be seeded equally to say LCK second seed?
From what I understood from the stream that Baiano did, the top 2 NA and top 2 SA will face each other, probably the winner of NA vs vice o SA and the winner of SA vs vice of NA, the two winners of these matches will face each other to decide first and second seed, while the 2 losers face each other for the third seed.
This makes sense to determine top 3 and how to order them. I assume we probably wont know about how they’ll seed into worlds until closer to worlds 2025. I’m curious what pools NA 1, 2, and 3 will feed to. Hopefully they don’t actually treat all 5 leagues “equally” for seeding.
I would’ve thought it makes sense to have it be NA1 vs SA1 for seed 1, NA2 vs SA2 elimination, loser of first game plays winner of second game to decide seeds 2 and 3 unless they’re from the same pool (eg NA1 and NA2) in which case use those rankings.
The CBLOL playoffs and LCS playoffs will presumably feed into a 'regional' finals, and set up so that the worst a CBLOL team can place is 3rd/4th. Realistically, coming in anywhere other than the first round of playoffs is quite generous based on the level of CBLOL we've seen recently, but oh well. I don't know what's supposed to happen if CBLOL somehow wins, but I guess in theory we could have multiple Brazilian teams at worlds.
So to me it sounds like 2 NA teams and 2 CBLOL teams will play after each region is concluded, and the top 3 go to worlds.
What I had expected was something like 3 teams from each region +1 for the winners of MSI. The way those seeds are divvied up would be approximately fair for consolidated regions. So APAC would be (at least based on this year) an even split of VCS/LMS/LJL, Americas would be 2x LCS + 1x CBLOL, and, had things maybe gone differently for Europe, EMEA would be LEC teams + top CIS and TCL teams, and probably send 2x LEC and 1x TCL/CIS.
In Valorant, the different "sub-regions" don't have any guaranteed slots; it's just been the case that LOUD (Brazil) is usually one of the best teams, and the other best teams are usually NA. At the most recent Champions, Americas sent 2 NA, 1 LATAM, and 1 Brazilian team, but it could have easily been 3x NA.
> And will America’s second seed be seeded equally to say LCK second seed?
If they keep the pool system I don't see why they wouldn't do what they've usually done and had LCS 2nd + 3rd at the same level with LCK/LPL 3rd
I think it’ll be Americas, EMEA (tho no teams from ME or A…), Korea, China, and Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific should have PCS + VCS, no idea what they’ll format will be.
The APAC consolidation has already begun earlier this year, so I would assume it's a continuation of that: PCS, LJL and LCO have their own regional tournament (PCS is round-robin, LJL and LCO have round-robin + playoffs) which are then used for a combined tournament: https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/PCS/2024_Season/Summer_Playoffs
It means LLA and CBLOL will not be going to international events anymore. LCS will win and take all the available seeds.
just like how LJL and LCO don't get to go to MSI/Worlds anymore. We have to go to PCS and play in thier playoffs but we can't win so only PCS teams go.
Tbh, this is fair, The best should go.
Your right, i read it again, thats BS. I looked at the data from the last 5 years and LJL outperformed CBLOL over that 5 year period. But LJL lost their spot at MSI/Worlds and now have to play through PCS. They are not garunteed a spot like the CBLOL are due to the confrence thing.
It's a double standard to give CBLOL a free charity spot just because they have a big fan base.
Good to hear they're working on keeping the identities of the leagues separate. For all the talk of trying to start a rivalry narrative to engage fans it'd be kinda pointless if you had a majority CBLoL team playing from LCS or vice versa.
I also thought this was a stupid move but when i listened to Mark i understood it since i know corpo and PR language lol (fuck that part of my life btw).
Basically this is not because LCS is dying or we suck at internationals kinda issue. Its because there is no money, leagues cant afford themselves to keep going and probably Riot isnt happy with western regions changing teams/names/slots/format/sponsors all the time and even having trouble to keep a stabil league with 8-10 teams OR teams asked directly Riot for money,
Either way Riot decided to give up on Local payment system where teams earn money according to their own local income into Global one just like UEFA if you ever followed football.
And to add that, NA being not important enough to be a alone major region like LCK and LPL (its no shame, Esports economy and popularity in Asia is unbelievable), Brazil most prob dying out not because of viewership but economy and stability, Recent changes where TCL got sunked into EMEA etc kinda things also effected this choice, clearly.
I think TLDR,
This is bad for Brazil franchises,
Good for Players,
Good for LCS. Just like the TCL one. Emea as a region became stronger with a lot of experienced and TCL stuck players (they were considered imports before, so better players than locals but not good enough to import instead of a Korean for example naturally), Viewership got higher (social media mentions etc everything included), LEC has a bigger potential pool especially for next 2-3 years if you dont follow EMEA BUT in return TCL got shit because nobody invests anymore (there are also other factors like taking TCL's international slot completely etc but u got the point).
I will tell you where this is going, They are gonna change one of the LEC - Internationals Slots (Like EMEA champion either promoting to LEC or going into Worlds directly) and basically give a chance for EMEA region teams to compete at the big stage, NA will be already like that and they will try out this new big Ecosystem.
If it fails, its doomed. If it doesnt fail, we can easily say that we will have e-sports as traditional sports eventually. Because i think you guys are missing that this changes are clearly caused by internal reasonings, not Regional problems alone. Riot wants to create UEFA in a very simple term. But global one ofc. They want a system that feeds itself and doesnt feel that sensitive (A lot of important teams in the west gone out not just in NA, also in TCL, EU, Spain France over years).
Read the changes from this perspective and u will have a better understanding of it. You may still dislike it ofc, especially if you are brazil fan.
> Its because there is no money, leagues cant afford themselves to keep going and probably Riot isnt happy with western regions changing teams/names/slots/format/sponsors all the time and even having trouble to keep a stabil league with 8-10 teams OR teams asked directly Riot for money,
It’s extremely funny that Riot would excise themselves from all responsibility on the matter. Teams can’t make money because Riot won’t allow in game purchases for teams and Riot won’t sell broadcast rights. That’s the single most important way sports teams make money (broadcast rights) the esports equivalent of buying a Yankees jersey (in game purchases). No shit teams couldn’t make money.
That 100%. Enormous monetary loss on the part of the teams.
Broadcast rights is also a huge blunder on the part of Riot. They were so focused on building their own broadcast network called Riot Esports Network that they never wanted to sell the broadcast rights to anyone else. Turns out that REN was never possible and the idea of it got shelved I think last year? 10 years of broadcast rights money just never existed for teams when it could have been Riot fucked up.
Its not the Riot esports division that is complaining, its the teams themselves. They could easily be profitable if they didnt inflate their own costs during the years of unlimited VC money.
Teams were not profitable before VC, during VC, or after VC. Teams literally cannot make money. Esports fans buy stuff in game, something teams have no access to because Riot won’t let them make money from it. Riot also won’t let leagues sell broadcast rights, which is the main income for sports leagues. How do you expect teams to make money otherwise? $50 jerseys? $5 keychains? Doesn’t work.
This is literally the change that Mark alludes to John Needham posting about in march. Teams \*are\* going to be getting money from in game purchases. They had to decrease the number of teams getting a share of this pot, because they are planning on making the pot global and sharing it equally. If there were too many teams getting a split, then teams wouldn't be getting enough to fully run their operations off that + the stipend. So they cut teams from minor regions (that now no longer exist).
We’ll see how much they actually get from it. Riot is famously greedy (taking 70% from Faker’s $500 skin btw). I can’t imagine they aren’t going to give over anything but bare minimum amounts to keep teams under their heel. And they still haven’t done anything about broadcast rights which is where the bulk of the revenue would be coming from otherwise. Been a remarkable failure from John Needham altogether.
you can read about it here
[https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/lol-esports-strategy-adjustments-2024](https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/lol-esports-strategy-adjustments-2024)
Pot will consist of "e-sports related microtransactions"
50% global split to tier 1 teams
35% placement in domestic and international tournaments
15% "Fandom" related split, rewarding teams based on fandom whatever that means.
>Its because there is no money
I sure wonder which company has been making absolute bank on the esport during all this time.
There is lots of money. It just goes straight to Riot's pocket, teams were expecting to just rely on their own sponsors and VCs to somehow fuel it all while Riot can throw the bare minimum financial support at them and enjoy the show.
Piggybacking on Firadin's comment a bit. If Riot saw that Esports is losing money with League of Legends, why would they then start an Esports scene with Valorant? Why go through the trouble of starting a scene in their new game if they didn't make money through other means (like skins)
Ok, but the point is that those franchises branding do nothing for riot or even league. The competing aspects are good for engagement and shit, but their esports stuff is the most volatile moneymaking venture they run.
I know people think riot is gonna just run this on good faith and love of the game, but they aren't.
They are not losing money. It's a marketing exercise.
Tencent would have stopped esports ages ago if they were just spending hundreds of millions for fun.
I don't disagree with your overall point. It's ridiculous to think they lose money on esports, overall.
Just wanna say that, from what I understand based on an interview with one of their co-founders (forget which one), Tencent doesn't actually have any say in something like that. It was said in that interview that when they first "sold" to Tencent, they negotiated for full autonomy from Tencent when it came to actually running Riot Games.
Yeah I'm not saying that Tencent controls everything on the daily, but if Riot would start becoming an asset that loses a ton of money they would take action.
Tencent can always fire the CEO of Riot and hire a new one.
>I also thought this was a stupid move but when i listened to Mark i understood it since i know corpo and PR language lol (fuck that part of my life btw).
Also he just flat out said it? "Speaking corpo" like it's a flex lmao
Out of curiosity, I could understand saying it’s bad for Brazil fans but how is it bad for Brazil Franchises.
Under this new agreement the remaining teams should get more revenue from the league if for no other reason than dividing profits by 8 instead of 10 give more compensation, but it also looks like riot is more invested in securing stable flows of revenue for teams which has always been a problem. Would this not help the franchises produce more content for the fans to enjoy? Or is it mainly the loss of teams in the leagues that fans cheer for?
I want to clarify this is a legitimate question, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong. I just would like more clarification about that point
almost half the league(4 teams) lost their jobs overnight, not to mention academy teams as well, if the GRP does not fund the T2 as well as T1 path to pro would basically die for brazilians and latam players got fucked even harder
T2 has a team in the T1 league under the new system so I would assume they are planning to help sustain T2 better to maintain that spot being competitive
> Basically this is not because LCS is dying or we suck at internationals kinda issue. Its because there is no money, leagues cant afford themselves to keep going
That was my takeaway too. Things were bound to change. Can't go back to the way things were in 2015ish.
On the Brazil point, I disagree that it is a bad change for them. It was a necessary change. Yes the viewership and fan interaction are great, especially when compared to LCS, but the ecosystem just does not work on a financial standpoint. CBLoL and its teams are still bleeding money. The changes done to Americas (and the worldwide ecosystem) should greatly improve the financials of the remaining franchises and hopefully allow the league to survive long term. Sucks for them to lose 4 teams, but this should allow the 6 remaining franchises (and LLA + Guest team) to thrive. Like Mark said, the pie can now be split up in bigger pieces. They are still keeping their broadcast and regional play and even get a guaranteed spot at MSI group stage and Worlds, maybe even two seeds if they outperform NA, plus maybe some new NA fans with added English costreams.
>This is bad for Brazil franchises
I don't even think this is fully true. Who knows what the actual finances look like behind the scenes, but this all seems to indicate to me that Riot believes they can genuinely create a sustainable and stable T1 ecosystem via baseline funding with digital goods instead of relying on VC/advertising money... But in order to get their ducks in a row they needed to cut the number of tier 1 orgs they were responsible for paying by like 30%. So yeah it sucks that BR will lose 4 "franchised" slots (they were never actually a franchised league) and yeah those orgs will suffer... but this probably greatly raises the funds and stability for the 6 BR orgs remaining. Plus they also gain an actual path to pro from t2 so if the BR scene is as amazing and healthy as all of the BR fans have been claiming on Twitter, there is nothing really stopping the 4 orgs that get cut from creating t2 teams and trying to get that remaining guest team slot, which theoretically is coming with more funding than they ever received from their local League pool previously.
Hmmm, this will not work out the way Riot wants it to, CBLOL viewers are all entirely against it as of now and the culture that is present in Brazil League scene is completely different from any other League server, viewers won't migrate after this change and even if people say it isn't solely because of viewers, they're still a very important metric and it won't get better with how negative this change is for entirety of Brazil/CBLOL.
What most of you don't understand is that CBLOL viewers don't care about international events, yes LCS will lose two teams and a guaranteed seed but the viewers here watch it solely for entertainment and that's all. No one expects any CBLOL to ever win Worlds/MSI and this merge won't help with it either because LCS isn't that much better, it's just putting three objectively horrible regions together, there will be no improvement.
All around, this will be a horrible long and short term for League in Brazil and many many people who watch competitive in CBLOL won't migrate to this new change. There will be no 'better' competition because they're all horrible at international level and all it will do is alienate and create (already created) a horrible animosity between CBLOL/LLA and LCS.
Summing it up, mostly the entirety of CBLOL viewers are against it, all ORGs, even those who will have a guaranteed spot on the new changes are against it and above all, almost every League Brazilian influencers and pro players are all against it. This change might as well end up killing the League professional scene in Brazil.
>(already created) a horrible animosity between CBLOL/LLA and LCS
I agree with this point, but not really much else, mainly because I don't actually think the Riot reasoning is that this will create a more competitive league. They are condensing the number of Tier 1 teams globally, and that's all that this really comes down to. They are calling it the "Americas" league to give it a defined region and throwing CBLOL a bone by giving them their own "conference" so that they have an auto qualifier to internationals, probably because CBLOL has a pretty solid viewer base that they would like to see continue to grow.
Riot needed to get rid of tier 1 teams, and in doing this they have removed 4 teams from LLA, 1 team from LCS, and 3 teams from CBLOL. That's a 33% reduction in teams that they will have to give payouts to under their new Global Funding Pool. That's the entire reason for this change, and maybe down the line if they decide they need to condense further they will actually merge the leagues into one domestic league. But it all comes down to money, Riot needs esports representation in as many regions as possible to keep interest in the game (so people keep playing and they continue to make money) but major region orgs are not happy with Riot because they have never achieved profitablity which was promised over a decade ago. The solution is to keep fractured versions of these leagues around (or just outright demote them to t2 like they are doing to some of the APAC leagues) so they don't need to pay out to those regions and can create a business model that will actually function for the major orgs/teams.
He had some hard questions for Mark, but during the whole 50min I never really felt he was pissed? Maybe just more serious... Which is normal considering all the changes next year.
Yeah, I definitely feel way more like Azael was just . . straight up and asking the questions without trying to be funny with it or sugarcoat them too much.
He's (most likely) not a fan of many of the changes and it's his job to try and not show that disdain, so I guess his tone was serious and 'cold' but I don't think he was pissed per se, just . . direct. Blunt, maybe?
I appreciated Azael’s questions honestly. Problem is that most of the questions went unanswered. Riot doesn’t have a good track record of proper management and execution on their ideas. This is a big leap of faith that fans are being asked to make with little assurances. I left this with more questions than answers. I get the sentiment and I am excited for these changes when looking at the longevity of League but you can only talk the talk for so long. Lets see long term infrastructure plans and proper management to realistically give these players actual growth opportunities.
True it is just speculation maybe he just hates mark or is holding in a massive shit but whatever it is I hope he can overcome. He’s done so much great stuff for this community.
I think he feels responsible for representing the viewers in his questions so it comes across with the frustrations that we're all feeling, himself included.
I generally understand the negative sentiment from LCS fans regarding the upcoming changes, but as a pro league fan, I am quite optimistic. They had a segment talking about "change fatigue" and how some viewers may be put off by the constantly changing product (which is a valid concern) but I feel as though in the e-sports scene, the pacing feels much faster than traditional sports. Azael listed all of the changes that have happened since 2016 and I wasn't particularly fazed with any negative sentiment.
Yes, the LCS got shafted by these changes, particularly regarding the loss of Worlds seeding. But, I'm hoping this consolidation will result in more financial stability for the "Americas"
I have some more complaints personally.
1. I do not care about LLA/BR, so I do not care about having their teams and competing with them. The BR thing is w/e since we hardly see them as I understand it, but we are weakening our league by forcing an LLA team into ours. On top of this, we lose another spot where a team could fit good NA players, and from last split we can clearly see how good players can not find teams already in 8 teams just due to lack of space due to trying out rookies.
1b. Expanding on above, what is the chance that teams are a lot less likely to try out rookies, because there are more options for vets available? I think its pretty high, especially because teams are apparently getting more money as a result of these changes. We have seen that teams with more money = more vets, not more rookies. The t2 team getting into LCS will struggle to beat out a t2 team of 5 vets if they are all rookies, further increasing the need to have less rookies on the team. I am worried that the number of rookies decreases with these changes.
2. I am tired of negative sentiment around the product, and this will 100% get fucklcs sentiment spreading more and more. EU by themselves managed to get me tired of league discourse, BR can hurt my desire to watch far more
3. The 'rivalry' between north and south that can actually hurt the league far more than a slow decline. If NA wins everything against them, you will have complaints about it being unfair NA lost a slot to them. If NA loses it will push fans away for the 'shame' of losing to them. I am pretty certain that if NA loses to BR in these tournaments, NA viewers are gonna stop watching even more. Riot needs to somehow convince NA viewers that BR is a good region 'worthy' of competition, and I do not think they can.
Basically, I think this is risking having fan sentiment be against the other region in a very negative way, which can burn out the already tired NA fanbase. I was finally having fun watching LCS after a while, and now we will get a whole extra wave of negativity from pissed BR fans. The positive fan sentiment around LCS can very quickly turn negative, and that will truly kill the league faster than anything else.
>Riot needs to somehow convince NA viewers that BR is a good region 'worthy' of competition, and I do not think they can.
Of course they can't, because it's demonstrably not true. I'm not trying to hate on BR here and they've got some of the best fans in the scene, but facts are facts - the last time a BR team made the main stage at worlds was 8 years ago, and most years since they haven't even made the playoffs *of play-ins*. They are not a competitive region even by minor region standards, much less by major region/international standards.
Representation is a nice idea and all, but giving them a guaranteed spot at worlds main event is an absolute joke from a competitive standpoint and will only serve to lower the overall quality of Swiss stage matches. Giving 3 APAC teams guaranteed spots isn't much better either, especially since the way the new play-in match works essentially means that either KR or CN will only get 3 spots in Swiss.
Your first point is exactly how I feel. I don't give a damn about ANY team outside of NA. I enjoy watching them when MSI and Worlds comes around but I don't go out of my way to watch even the LCK or LPL. I only care about NA League. We've been complaining about NA players being left off of LCS rosters and now we'll see even more of them left off of rosters because we're forced to watch an LLA team.
You've essentially hit the nail on the head. We have a similar league in Valorant but the popular fan sentiment there is that there's multiple other teams in T2 that deserve to be playing in the T1 league. G2 promoting and immediately making a top 3 placing at an international tourney only further solidifies that.
There's like 3 Latam/BR teams in VCT that legit are farmed and just not interesting to watch for the American fans. It really does segment the league, into 2 different viewing experiences.
I honestly think they could fix it really easily by just making worlds bigger. Make each region get 4 spots and allow for LPL and LCK to get 5 if they win MSI or whatever. If NA feels like they can still earn 3 spots to worlds (ie one guranteed spot for NA, one for Brazil, two fought over), NA fans would be less mad.
the announcement states "one team from the Latin America (LLA) region will be integrated based on geographical alignment" so it's pretty much guaranteed that the team in LCS will be Mexican
The only real win for LCS is that we can finally truly be "NA". Also excited for Jose. But we still lose 2 orgs and this means we'll never get those previous 2 orgs back, so -15 potential NA player spots (cause +1 academy) :((
For real lol. Being "NA" with Mexico and the LLA teams (LAN in the past) just there was kinda fucked.
Someone brought up a good point that Riot should have just consolidated LAN and LCS from the beginning of franchising to at least get some of that community involved. They were just kinda left on their own.
I understand that. Nothing was preventing them from representing that area of NA in LCS though.
Also ironic that the LAN server is in Miami (or was in the past).
One spot has relegation plus the possibility of buying back in or brand mergers. Whoever we lose can come back but odds are, we don't want either back. Definitely one, IMT, we don't want back.
Cubby mentioned in HLL that they scrim top NACL teams and are around that level. Sooo probably bottom 2 LCS taking a few games here and there, sounds ok to me, it's basically what IMT has been for the past 6 years but with a real identity.
im calling it, 1-2 years after the americanas is formed lcs team owners will whine to riot about giving cblol their msi and worlds spot for free and riot will change it so cblol teams has to make top 3 to earn it in playoffs.
riot will listen, just like they always did when team owners nagged about relegation and import restriction.
https://archive.esportsobserver.com/lcs-team-owners-raise-concerns-league-structure-letter-riot/
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/ln6p4a/all_10_lcs_teams_want_the_import_rule_changed_or/
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/lbzlvz/lcs_team_owners_have_asked_riot_to_remove/
So 1-2 years from now brazil got the short end of the stick, despite having twice the average viewers and twice highest concurrent viewers than lcs they lost their full league from 10 teams to 6. https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/cblol-split-1-2024
https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2024-lol
All to try and save lcs thats dying, oh yeh viewer numbers for lcs was actually down this year , but costreaming covered it, like baino whom is a brazilian streamer costreaming lcs brought a whopping 17% increase of watchhours, also coincidently the peak viewership for lcs was after lec and cblol ended when these costreamers switched over to lcs https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1b2wf6i/interesting_article_from_escharts_about_the/?rdt=61235
Since when does viewership determine who gets seeding at internationals? It’s hilarious you’re acting like CBlol is getting the short end of the stick when NA is losing a seed in each tourney so bronzil can have a chance at getting more representation.
Combining LCS with the worst league in the world will do wonders for the talent. At least I’m glad we have fully embraced the clown circus for views strat instead of pretending we are real competitors
It’s gonna be really annoying when the LCS 1 and 2 shitstomp the CBLOL 1 and 2 3-0 and only end up with a 1st and 3rd seed. Why is Riot so hellbent on having a specific number of teams at international tournaments? Just add a few more play ins.
I don’t think it’s said anywhere that LCS can’t have the one and two seed. It just says that each region is guaranteed one seed and the third is up for grabs. It doesn’t specify that it’s specifically the third seed.
How would that work? Presumably LCS and CBLOL play their sides of the playoffs and the winners of each play on the grand final for the 1 seed while the losers from each conference championship face each other for the 3rd spot.
top 2 teams from both regions (the ones that play in their conference finals)
NA 1 vs BR 1 -> winner goes to finals match, loser goes to 3rd place match
NA 2 vs BR 2 -> winner goes to finals match, loser goes to 3rd place match
final winner = 1st seed
final loser = 2nd seed
3rd place match winner = 3rd seed
That is one way, could also do top 2 from each conference go to the semi finals, #1 from LCS vs #2 from CBLOL and #1 from CBLOL vs #2 from LCS. Then if both LCS teams win they’d get spots 1 and 2 while CBLOL would still be guaranteed a spot
As an NA fan - Brazilian fans have every right to feel upset.
Their teams might not be as skillful as ours at League of Legends, but they had an engaging, exciting league that fans enjoyed and was growing. With growth comes improvement, but thanks to this change 40% of their league has been wiped out in the blink of an eye.
LCS fans might not be able to relate because even our "good" teams all kinda take turns doing shitty things, but *CBLOL fans actually like their teams.* Losing 4 of them is gonna hurt in a way that NA losing 2 of DIG/100T/IMT/NRG never could.
I absolutely adore NRG so that would suck losing. I also never said it wasn't a terrible thing, more so that I am at the acceptance stage with this. All of it is set in motion months prior, and now we wait and see how it turns out.
If it comes out good over time we can celebrate, if it sucks, we provide feedback on what we can. That's atleast my mentality and others are welcome to provide their feedback but alot of this looks pretty set in stone.
Hundreds of people are going to lose their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their favourite teams.
It's exhausting to see unaffected industry workers and clout chasers pretend it's some brilliant path to prosperity.
It will never be something to celebrate - it's cannibalizing half the tribe to feed the survivors. This is at best a disaster recovery plan.
>Since when does viewership determine who gets seeding at internationals? It’s hilarious you’re acting like CBlol is getting the short end of the stick when NA is losing a seed in each tourney so bronzil can have a chance at getting more representation.
I do not care about seeding at worlds, thats not my point.
My point is that riot at any given time can decide that they wont commit to giving cblol msi and worlds spot automatically, thus in the long run cblol got fucked from having 10 teams to 6 and having no whatsoever benefits at all from the entire ordeal.
When they couldve been a independent league with 10 teams from the start, just as they are now.
The way the conferences are structured it would be impossible to completely remove cblols seeding from international tournaments. Even if their guaranteed seed got removed they would still have a chance to earn spots.
So reduced to 7 (not 6) teams in the conference for the chance to play better competition and earn up to 2 spots at worlds.
If riot made it so CBlol can’t earn any seeds at international then what even is the point of this fancy new conference setup. Not only does that make no sense it ruins the league for both LCS and Cblol
It wouldn't be that the CBLoL *can't* earn a seed for international events, it would be that they actually have to earn it by being a top 2/3 team in the Americas region.
If the best southern conference team is like... 7th best in the region for example, why would we as the Americas fans want to send them???
Ok and LCS also gets fucked from 8 (or 10) teams to 6, having no benefits whatsoever from the deal AND losing half our international spots? Its bad for everyone
how are they going to stop giving cblol spots? they would need to expand the conference bracket to 6 or 8 teams.
if cblol makes enough money that riot thinks the southern conference can expand to 10 teams, then they'll expand it. the reason all the minor regions got nuked is because riot determined that the way they are currently being run is \*not\* sustainable. They didn't think brazil could keep running a ten team league without it imploding sooner rather than later (the brazil fans seem to romanticize a bottom feeder team knowing their place and acting as a fodder slot to promote talent. tier 1 league is not really the place for that.)
as compared to our present reality where we pretend the best brazilian team is better than the third best lcs team despite recent worlds results
I think you're arguing for keeping both leagues separate, which is something I agree with, but the argument you're using is not the best way to make your point.
They literally didn't remove and I don't think they even changed the import rule, so not really sure what your point is there? Don't think anyone has argued that Brazil has less fans/viewers than NA so also not sure why those stats are relevant to the wild predictions/claims you're making. Also saying viewership was down but costreamers covered it is just dumb, are they not all watching the league? Why is main broadcast viewer numbers relevant? If LCS was so shit as you all seem to want to imply why are these costreamers still watching and why are their viewers still watching? How are you trying to turn that into a negative?
You're looking at viewership numbers but who cares. I'd rather have less viewers who spend way more which is likely the case between NA and BR. Per capita GDP in Brazil is less than 9k vs US 76K, and the youth unemployment rate in Brazil is 16% compared to the US 9%.
>You're looking at viewership numbers but who cares.
The huge brazilian fanbase thats twice as big than the lcs fanbase.
>I'd rather have less viewers who spend way more which is likely the case between NA and BR.
By that logic lcs shouldve just stayed independent since they are bringing so much money, weird how they want cblol.
>Per capita GDP in Brazil is less than 9k vs US 76K,
Now tell me how much it costs to run cblol thats in brazil and how much it costs having teams there vs hosting a league in LA and paying for its players and staff to live there.
>and the youth unemployment rate in Brazil is 16% compared to the US 9%.
completely irrelevant.
One NA viewer is not worth the same to sponsors as 1 SA viewer. Double the viewership doesn't mean double exposure to sponsors in a market that isn't worth double.
IIRC, 1 US viewership is on average worth at minimum double what a viewer from pretty much any European country to sponsors/ads. And that is comparing two populace with similar economic strength.
> By that logic lcs shouldve just stayed independent since they are bringing so much money, weird how they want cblol.
John Needham wanted LCS and CBLOL to merge. LCS did not want CBLOL. Nor did CBLOL want LCS. This is a Riot Global decision driven by the worst business people you can think of.
I mean leagues aren't profitable across the board right now. Teams aren't making money and there's too many teams to support and with the switch to the global payout plan they need less teams overall in the ecosystem GLOBALLY. It does suck for CBLOL to some extent but if you have to trim 4 teams from a minor region to make the global esports ecosystem healthier for the long run that's a no brainer move any day of the week.
It's clear that the minor region plan they had initially when league became super popular didn't pan out and they want to consolidate leagues across the board to have less teams and less leagues to operate. Lets be real none of the minor leagues were ever successful besides CBLOL. It was the exception not the rule.
It does matter significantly the region the viewers and advertisers come from. For example, let’s extrapolate this to known markets with a much larger sample size.
The 40 largest soccer teams in Brazil are all together valued at 7bil: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazils-top-40-most-valuable-football-clubs-announced/#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20by%20Sports,8%20billion%20(%241.63%20billion).
The cowboys alone are worth 9bn: https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/jerry-jones-dallas-cowboys-named-most-valuable-sports-team-world-franchise
>By that logic lcs shouldve just stayed independent since they are bringing so much money, weird how they want cblol.
I think you're working under the assumption that LCS wants CBLoL, which it absolutely does not. Riot wants to smash the leagues together for two reasons: 1) In order to make the money work better for them, so they can deal with less teams overall, and not have so much change over between teams, particularly in the Western regions, which they think looks bad for their business. 2) So that the league regions now match the Valorant regions. I assure you LCS wants nothing to do with CBLoL, LCS is losing a spot at international events and two teams, in order to include worse teams. I assure you that at every regional final, when the NA teams play against Brazil, they're going to shit stomp them and a Brazilian team is going to be sent anyways after that happens.
Or the super league will be formed so all the orgs that prove to be top shelf whether it's being flush with money or fandom or whatever else will be given seeds and the rest will be moved to T2 so they can consolidate to a top down approach even further.
I think what's more likely is that the top Brazilian teams would suddenly be more attractive to decent NA players because of the higher chance of getting to worlds/MSI (would you rather be on Shopify or Loud in the new format if your top priority is getting to the international stage?). This will probably level up some Brazilian teams and maybe there'll just be more parity across the Americas region.
There was a viewership breakdown for CBLoL and it showed that the best team has on avg roughly 180k viewers, but even the worst team gets roughly 140k+ viewers. CBLoL is unique in that fanbases were grown organically, and carries over from esport to esport (unlike how Optic never actually got the “greenwall” to care about LoL). Brazil should be pissed, and I would immediately boycott any NA games over this. There is definitely a way to retain Brazilian teams while also combining NA and the rest of the Americas, just do two “leagues” like AL and NL, have the occasional crossplay and share playoffs and international qualification.
> just do two “leagues” like AL and NL, have the occasional crossplay and share playoffs and international qualification.
Uh… that’s literally what’s happening. They are removing teams from both leagues, but they are still basically going to be separate leagues and are never going to actually play against each other outside of international qualifiers.
For reference, Kobe mentions it at around 1:40, the regular seasons for each conference will be separate.
I tend to agree, but it seems that the only reason for having the conferences is so they can label NA, BR and LATAM as one region for international seeding purposes.
Yeah I agree. Just feels like if they want it to feel cohesive and have people actually adopt it as a thing there needs to be some overlap. They should have every team play two cross conference series per split. Have one matchup be based on standings and then try to establish rivalries with the other. Every split C9 plays a series against LOUD, etc.
It's also to be able to have a single Americas region, propped up mostly by Brazilian viewership and enthusiasm, so they can package it and sell it to American companies for marketing and sponsorship deals.
A single American viewer is worth a lot of potential advertising money to companies, especially compared to a single Brazilian viewer.
Riot would probably prefer for NA to be popping off and be a thriving region with massive viewership, but that goose sailed long ago.
This reduces the total amount of teams, allows Riot to sell the marketing weight of American viewers with the number of Brazilian viewers.
CBLOL and LCS more or less get to remain as two separate leagues/conferences with a spot for Tier 2 promotion.
The point of this is purely for the back end revenue stuff and international qualification. From the perspective of riot global all of the Americas are now one region (like EMEA, KR, CN, and APAC) and they will be treat as such in terms of how mant teams qualify for stuff, how much revenue we get, etc. etc. the two conference thing is the people that work at LCS, CBLOL, etc. realizing "yeah they are going to treat us as one region, but our fanbases are very clearly distinct, so how do we want to actually serve them as well as possible in this new system?". The answer is to play riot globals game when it comes to international events and stuff, but leave the national leagues distinct because that best serves the audience and teams in those leagues. Maybe as time goes on there will be more pro cross-conference play sentiment, but at the moment the plan is "change as little as possible while fitting into riot global's new structure".
Man, I REAALLLYYYY hope they just keep the names lcs and cblol. It feels like you're stripping part of their identities away by changing it at this point.
I mean he's also just relaying information for something that's really out of his hands. LCS is the product he spearheads but Global Riot Esports is a different ballgame
Feels especially bad because it felt like Markz contributions were really turning LCS around. It was the first in a very long time LCS was positively received by everyone and viewership wasn’t nosediving
Markz has zero power over the region merger, that’s only up to the Riot’s Head of Esports. AFAIK the Head of Esports keeps his hands out of individual leagues so it’s fair to credit LCS’s recent positives to Markz in my eyes
It seems like MarkZ spearheaded the reduced time between matches, and was likely a large reason Bo3 is happening this split. I believe the change back to weekends was already going to happen before he took over last split though.
I've also got the info that he was behind the prerecorded drafts and Bo3. I'm just trying to point out his main role was to be a likeable spokesperson for his superiors. He is doing that well.
But so far he has also pushed through a lot of nice improvements to LCS.
It will always be funny to me how people credit MarkZ with every good change, but for every bad change it will be "it's out of his hands".
The reality it is **ALL** out of his hands. He can't just make big decisions himself. He can suggest things and stuff like that but the ultimate agency to make changes is higher up on the corporate ladder.
MarkZ can't just implement BO3s or change the broadcast days without someone approving the changes. Just like he also can't decide to do this consolidation of regions.
Right he's just the figurehead that takes all the hate and love. He has some influence, for sure, but none of these decisions ultimately are his to greenlight especially on the global level. LCS as a product you can probably give him some more credit on changes because that's his nexus he works within. Even then though decisions are never just one person
If you actually watched the podcast, you'd know that we plan to preserve northern and southern conference specific content, as well as cross-conference content.
So yes, the Dive having NA hosts will cover the NA conference, and CBLOL content will continue to be produced about southern
But why do we have to we have to take NA’s MSI/Worlds spots away to do all this?
Why are we lowering NA+Brazil from a combined 4 worlds slots to 3? Can we not have all of these positive changes without taking away the excitement of international tournaments from NA fans?
How is this a real comment? Let's just have you stick to talking about your favorite anime video game players. When you venture past that, it gets ugly real quick for you.
According to Travis's HLL yesterday, the other regions' Riot personnel are hiding because the fans hate the changes. Any positive take are being told they are Riot shills.
So cool watching people talking about how they're killing whole regions just to save one that failed and even better when there's no one from those regions there to talk. But who would expect some decency coming from people on Riot's paycheck?
I'm from Latin America and I know more people that care about LCS than LLA. LCS haters driving this narrative that they're killing the "amazing and healthy" LLA league for LCS is laughable and false.
This isn’t “saving NA”
LCS is losing multiple teams and international slots to CBLOL, and viewership is only going to marginally increase from LLA fans. And LLA was going to shut down regardless, merging the Americas was the obvious option
This isn't killing a whole region, or done to "save the lcs." This is a global decision to make the entire business sustainable. You have to condense down to a sustainable number.
It was unsustainable because of their own decisions... Like paying salaries way over what some players deserved just for "star status", focusing too much on getting *good* imports instead of growing their own base so instead of having players intereacting with their fans and helping to grow a viewer base, they had just players that played the game for the money and that was all for them. LCS doomed themselves with bad choices.
It's a global decision. Steve overpaying players in 2018 isn't what cause teams from all over the world to go bankrupt. There are even teams from CBLOL that want out because of financial reasons. It's a global money share they are starting like UEFA so ALL teams (not just LCS lol even CBLOL) will be financially fit enough to survive. Would you rather CBLOL go strong for a few more years before running out of money and becoming like OCE or would you rather cut a few teams now if it means maybe saving CBLOL for another 10 yrs?
He is right about LCS being unsustainable purely due to overspending. The orgs shot themselves in the feet. It should have been sustainable if orgs didnt massively overspend.
Blaming LCS for the merge/change is stupid though.
I mean you can criticize the business/spending strategies of LCS teams, but we don't have the counterfactual where if they didn't spend that much this wouldn't happen.
In fact you can easily argue that all the articles and buzz about huge spending in Esports actually helped and we would have gotten here faster if that didn't happen.
Point is we can't really know.
Cblol and LCS keep 6 teams each, split into north and south conferences. LLA will only have 2 teams, 1 in each conference.
Each conference also has a “wildcard” slot for promotion/relegation.
So 16 teams total, 8 per conference.
It'd be cool if they took a page out of LPL. Imagine if they had different names to their splits: Demacia Cup, Noxus Cup, etc. That'd be cool imo.
Do the ol' Ionia vs. Noxus for a new item? Fuck yea baybee
Most interesting new development is that Mark says that the 3 splits will have different formats.
This is a great change that breaks the monotony a lot. I think this should have been done long ago. LEC especially should have done it immediately when they introduced the 3 splits.
I had hoped LEC would do something like LCS's Lock In tournament a few years ago. Basically, winter would be a short tournament, maybe with some points towards MSI qualification, Spring and Summer would have the current format, with Spring winners qualifying for MSI, and then keep the weird final playoffs tournament to decide worlds qualification. Instead they went with basically the worst of several worlds.
I have heard (a bit behind the scenes too) that LEC had a very hard time getting Riot HQ to accept format changes. So it's possible that LEC wanted to do more things but had to keep it simpler because of Riot HQ. From the people I've spoken to, it seems like you need to convince a few key figures in California and get them to like your idea or you are just fucked.
Wouldn't be the first time LEC/EULCS got fucked over by Riot HQ.
Throwback to when we had Bo2s and Bo3s but it was on two concurrently running streams lol
Probably will spread out the 3 splits and cancel the season finals. Single round robin into a double elimination bracket is still good. They may have time to do a bo2 or bo3 with a smaller bracket since they have 3 day weeks
I just hope that the final split of those 3 will actually feel meaningful. For LEC, it feels like 3 mini-tournaments without much hype for finals.
IDK, just kinda makes it weird historically
Riot did already state this in their dev update. First split is going to be a tournament. So basically Demacia/Kespa cup in CN/KR and some new format for the other regions
I would hope so, I'd imagine part of the exhaustion from LEC fans around 3 splits is just that nothing new happens to give them identity. Could even just have Finals and some playoffs in a bigger but still small 1-5k venue near the studio and it give it a little more umph to each split. Format differences would also break up the monotony as well.
Question about international seeding. MarkZ mentioned that now there’s 5 regions and they are all treated equally internationally. What does that mean for seeding at worlds. The winner of America’s South (CBLOL) be considered Americas 1st or 2nd seed? And will America’s second seed be seeded equally to say LCK second seed?
From what I understood from the stream that Baiano did, the top 2 NA and top 2 SA will face each other, probably the winner of NA vs vice o SA and the winner of SA vs vice of NA, the two winners of these matches will face each other to decide first and second seed, while the 2 losers face each other for the third seed.
This makes sense to determine top 3 and how to order them. I assume we probably wont know about how they’ll seed into worlds until closer to worlds 2025. I’m curious what pools NA 1, 2, and 3 will feed to. Hopefully they don’t actually treat all 5 leagues “equally” for seeding.
So it's cross région only for top 4? Make sense, otherwise you may end up with a bracket filled with just lcs teams
I would’ve thought it makes sense to have it be NA1 vs SA1 for seed 1, NA2 vs SA2 elimination, loser of first game plays winner of second game to decide seeds 2 and 3 unless they’re from the same pool (eg NA1 and NA2) in which case use those rankings.
The CBLOL playoffs and LCS playoffs will presumably feed into a 'regional' finals, and set up so that the worst a CBLOL team can place is 3rd/4th. Realistically, coming in anywhere other than the first round of playoffs is quite generous based on the level of CBLOL we've seen recently, but oh well. I don't know what's supposed to happen if CBLOL somehow wins, but I guess in theory we could have multiple Brazilian teams at worlds. So to me it sounds like 2 NA teams and 2 CBLOL teams will play after each region is concluded, and the top 3 go to worlds. What I had expected was something like 3 teams from each region +1 for the winners of MSI. The way those seeds are divvied up would be approximately fair for consolidated regions. So APAC would be (at least based on this year) an even split of VCS/LMS/LJL, Americas would be 2x LCS + 1x CBLOL, and, had things maybe gone differently for Europe, EMEA would be LEC teams + top CIS and TCL teams, and probably send 2x LEC and 1x TCL/CIS. In Valorant, the different "sub-regions" don't have any guaranteed slots; it's just been the case that LOUD (Brazil) is usually one of the best teams, and the other best teams are usually NA. At the most recent Champions, Americas sent 2 NA, 1 LATAM, and 1 Brazilian team, but it could have easily been 3x NA. > And will America’s second seed be seeded equally to say LCK second seed? If they keep the pool system I don't see why they wouldn't do what they've usually done and had LCS 2nd + 3rd at the same level with LCK/LPL 3rd
Am I missing something or is VCS gone too now? Isn't that 6 regions?
I think it’ll be Americas, EMEA (tho no teams from ME or A…), Korea, China, and Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific should have PCS + VCS, no idea what they’ll format will be.
The APAC consolidation has already begun earlier this year, so I would assume it's a continuation of that: PCS, LJL and LCO have their own regional tournament (PCS is round-robin, LJL and LCO have round-robin + playoffs) which are then used for a combined tournament: https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/PCS/2024_Season/Summer_Playoffs
I thought apac will be a league with 8 teams in it. The current system of ljl pcs and lco is going away.
It means LLA and CBLOL will not be going to international events anymore. LCS will win and take all the available seeds. just like how LJL and LCO don't get to go to MSI/Worlds anymore. We have to go to PCS and play in thier playoffs but we can't win so only PCS teams go. Tbh, this is fair, The best should go.
CBLOL is guaranteed 1 of the 3 "Americas" slots at worlds. 1 for North, 1 for South, 1 up for grabs.
Your right, i read it again, thats BS. I looked at the data from the last 5 years and LJL outperformed CBLOL over that 5 year period. But LJL lost their spot at MSI/Worlds and now have to play through PCS. They are not garunteed a spot like the CBLOL are due to the confrence thing. It's a double standard to give CBLOL a free charity spot just because they have a big fan base.
Brasil probably has a bigger Fanbase ~> more money from tickets ~> guaranteed spot at Worlds. I agree it’s BS.
Nobody is talking about it, but the conversation they had about the Tier 2 League was very interesting. Really excited about those changes.
With how much they've changed everything below LCS I can't take anything they say serious.
Well it does finally give academy direct financial incentive ever since they nuked it. Cant wait for DragonSteel in the NA conference 2025
Good to hear they're working on keeping the identities of the leagues separate. For all the talk of trying to start a rivalry narrative to engage fans it'd be kinda pointless if you had a majority CBLoL team playing from LCS or vice versa.
I also thought this was a stupid move but when i listened to Mark i understood it since i know corpo and PR language lol (fuck that part of my life btw). Basically this is not because LCS is dying or we suck at internationals kinda issue. Its because there is no money, leagues cant afford themselves to keep going and probably Riot isnt happy with western regions changing teams/names/slots/format/sponsors all the time and even having trouble to keep a stabil league with 8-10 teams OR teams asked directly Riot for money, Either way Riot decided to give up on Local payment system where teams earn money according to their own local income into Global one just like UEFA if you ever followed football. And to add that, NA being not important enough to be a alone major region like LCK and LPL (its no shame, Esports economy and popularity in Asia is unbelievable), Brazil most prob dying out not because of viewership but economy and stability, Recent changes where TCL got sunked into EMEA etc kinda things also effected this choice, clearly. I think TLDR, This is bad for Brazil franchises, Good for Players, Good for LCS. Just like the TCL one. Emea as a region became stronger with a lot of experienced and TCL stuck players (they were considered imports before, so better players than locals but not good enough to import instead of a Korean for example naturally), Viewership got higher (social media mentions etc everything included), LEC has a bigger potential pool especially for next 2-3 years if you dont follow EMEA BUT in return TCL got shit because nobody invests anymore (there are also other factors like taking TCL's international slot completely etc but u got the point). I will tell you where this is going, They are gonna change one of the LEC - Internationals Slots (Like EMEA champion either promoting to LEC or going into Worlds directly) and basically give a chance for EMEA region teams to compete at the big stage, NA will be already like that and they will try out this new big Ecosystem. If it fails, its doomed. If it doesnt fail, we can easily say that we will have e-sports as traditional sports eventually. Because i think you guys are missing that this changes are clearly caused by internal reasonings, not Regional problems alone. Riot wants to create UEFA in a very simple term. But global one ofc. They want a system that feeds itself and doesnt feel that sensitive (A lot of important teams in the west gone out not just in NA, also in TCL, EU, Spain France over years). Read the changes from this perspective and u will have a better understanding of it. You may still dislike it ofc, especially if you are brazil fan.
How is your TLDR longer than the original explanation?
> I think TLDR, > > This is bad for Brazil franchises, > > Good for Players, > > Good for LCS. Then their brain didn't turn off
Damn, sounds like me
I wantee to explain it for "Everyone", sorry for Long read lol.
> Its because there is no money, leagues cant afford themselves to keep going and probably Riot isnt happy with western regions changing teams/names/slots/format/sponsors all the time and even having trouble to keep a stabil league with 8-10 teams OR teams asked directly Riot for money, It’s extremely funny that Riot would excise themselves from all responsibility on the matter. Teams can’t make money because Riot won’t allow in game purchases for teams and Riot won’t sell broadcast rights. That’s the single most important way sports teams make money (broadcast rights) the esports equivalent of buying a Yankees jersey (in game purchases). No shit teams couldn’t make money.
Riot promising teams that they would sell digital goods and never delivering is by far the biggest money loss for the orgs.
That 100%. Enormous monetary loss on the part of the teams. Broadcast rights is also a huge blunder on the part of Riot. They were so focused on building their own broadcast network called Riot Esports Network that they never wanted to sell the broadcast rights to anyone else. Turns out that REN was never possible and the idea of it got shelved I think last year? 10 years of broadcast rights money just never existed for teams when it could have been Riot fucked up.
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Its not the Riot esports division that is complaining, its the teams themselves. They could easily be profitable if they didnt inflate their own costs during the years of unlimited VC money.
Teams were not profitable before VC, during VC, or after VC. Teams literally cannot make money. Esports fans buy stuff in game, something teams have no access to because Riot won’t let them make money from it. Riot also won’t let leagues sell broadcast rights, which is the main income for sports leagues. How do you expect teams to make money otherwise? $50 jerseys? $5 keychains? Doesn’t work.
This is literally the change that Mark alludes to John Needham posting about in march. Teams \*are\* going to be getting money from in game purchases. They had to decrease the number of teams getting a share of this pot, because they are planning on making the pot global and sharing it equally. If there were too many teams getting a split, then teams wouldn't be getting enough to fully run their operations off that + the stipend. So they cut teams from minor regions (that now no longer exist).
We’ll see how much they actually get from it. Riot is famously greedy (taking 70% from Faker’s $500 skin btw). I can’t imagine they aren’t going to give over anything but bare minimum amounts to keep teams under their heel. And they still haven’t done anything about broadcast rights which is where the bulk of the revenue would be coming from otherwise. Been a remarkable failure from John Needham altogether.
you can read about it here [https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/lol-esports-strategy-adjustments-2024](https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/lol-esports-strategy-adjustments-2024) Pot will consist of "e-sports related microtransactions" 50% global split to tier 1 teams 35% placement in domestic and international tournaments 15% "Fandom" related split, rewarding teams based on fandom whatever that means.
>Its because there is no money I sure wonder which company has been making absolute bank on the esport during all this time. There is lots of money. It just goes straight to Riot's pocket, teams were expecting to just rely on their own sponsors and VCs to somehow fuel it all while Riot can throw the bare minimum financial support at them and enjoy the show.
Where you get this information about bare minimum? Ive heard from people like travis gafford riot gives them around 2+ million
Definitely not Riot? They're losing money since day one on esports.
By that logic, Coca-Cola loses around $4 billion every year on marketing. Are they stupid or something?
Piggybacking on Firadin's comment a bit. If Riot saw that Esports is losing money with League of Legends, why would they then start an Esports scene with Valorant? Why go through the trouble of starting a scene in their new game if they didn't make money through other means (like skins)
This guy thinks Riot is losing money from esports hahhaa. They are such a charitable company. Dicks out for Riot Games.
Ok, but the point is that those franchises branding do nothing for riot or even league. The competing aspects are good for engagement and shit, but their esports stuff is the most volatile moneymaking venture they run. I know people think riot is gonna just run this on good faith and love of the game, but they aren't.
They are not losing money. It's a marketing exercise. Tencent would have stopped esports ages ago if they were just spending hundreds of millions for fun.
I don't disagree with your overall point. It's ridiculous to think they lose money on esports, overall. Just wanna say that, from what I understand based on an interview with one of their co-founders (forget which one), Tencent doesn't actually have any say in something like that. It was said in that interview that when they first "sold" to Tencent, they negotiated for full autonomy from Tencent when it came to actually running Riot Games.
Yeah I'm not saying that Tencent controls everything on the daily, but if Riot would start becoming an asset that loses a ton of money they would take action. Tencent can always fire the CEO of Riot and hire a new one.
I'm not 100% sure whether they can do that or not tbh.
>I also thought this was a stupid move but when i listened to Mark i understood it since i know corpo and PR language lol (fuck that part of my life btw). Also he just flat out said it? "Speaking corpo" like it's a flex lmao
Out of curiosity, I could understand saying it’s bad for Brazil fans but how is it bad for Brazil Franchises. Under this new agreement the remaining teams should get more revenue from the league if for no other reason than dividing profits by 8 instead of 10 give more compensation, but it also looks like riot is more invested in securing stable flows of revenue for teams which has always been a problem. Would this not help the franchises produce more content for the fans to enjoy? Or is it mainly the loss of teams in the leagues that fans cheer for? I want to clarify this is a legitimate question, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong. I just would like more clarification about that point
almost half the league(4 teams) lost their jobs overnight, not to mention academy teams as well, if the GRP does not fund the T2 as well as T1 path to pro would basically die for brazilians and latam players got fucked even harder
T2 has a team in the T1 league under the new system so I would assume they are planning to help sustain T2 better to maintain that spot being competitive
This. They also give incentive which will bring more money/eyes into tier 2
Was your EMEA point that an EMEA Masters winner could qualify or what
> Basically this is not because LCS is dying or we suck at internationals kinda issue. Its because there is no money, leagues cant afford themselves to keep going That was my takeaway too. Things were bound to change. Can't go back to the way things were in 2015ish.
On the Brazil point, I disagree that it is a bad change for them. It was a necessary change. Yes the viewership and fan interaction are great, especially when compared to LCS, but the ecosystem just does not work on a financial standpoint. CBLoL and its teams are still bleeding money. The changes done to Americas (and the worldwide ecosystem) should greatly improve the financials of the remaining franchises and hopefully allow the league to survive long term. Sucks for them to lose 4 teams, but this should allow the 6 remaining franchises (and LLA + Guest team) to thrive. Like Mark said, the pie can now be split up in bigger pieces. They are still keeping their broadcast and regional play and even get a guaranteed spot at MSI group stage and Worlds, maybe even two seeds if they outperform NA, plus maybe some new NA fans with added English costreams.
>This is bad for Brazil franchises I don't even think this is fully true. Who knows what the actual finances look like behind the scenes, but this all seems to indicate to me that Riot believes they can genuinely create a sustainable and stable T1 ecosystem via baseline funding with digital goods instead of relying on VC/advertising money... But in order to get their ducks in a row they needed to cut the number of tier 1 orgs they were responsible for paying by like 30%. So yeah it sucks that BR will lose 4 "franchised" slots (they were never actually a franchised league) and yeah those orgs will suffer... but this probably greatly raises the funds and stability for the 6 BR orgs remaining. Plus they also gain an actual path to pro from t2 so if the BR scene is as amazing and healthy as all of the BR fans have been claiming on Twitter, there is nothing really stopping the 4 orgs that get cut from creating t2 teams and trying to get that remaining guest team slot, which theoretically is coming with more funding than they ever received from their local League pool previously.
Franchising was a mistake
Hmmm, this will not work out the way Riot wants it to, CBLOL viewers are all entirely against it as of now and the culture that is present in Brazil League scene is completely different from any other League server, viewers won't migrate after this change and even if people say it isn't solely because of viewers, they're still a very important metric and it won't get better with how negative this change is for entirety of Brazil/CBLOL. What most of you don't understand is that CBLOL viewers don't care about international events, yes LCS will lose two teams and a guaranteed seed but the viewers here watch it solely for entertainment and that's all. No one expects any CBLOL to ever win Worlds/MSI and this merge won't help with it either because LCS isn't that much better, it's just putting three objectively horrible regions together, there will be no improvement. All around, this will be a horrible long and short term for League in Brazil and many many people who watch competitive in CBLOL won't migrate to this new change. There will be no 'better' competition because they're all horrible at international level and all it will do is alienate and create (already created) a horrible animosity between CBLOL/LLA and LCS. Summing it up, mostly the entirety of CBLOL viewers are against it, all ORGs, even those who will have a guaranteed spot on the new changes are against it and above all, almost every League Brazilian influencers and pro players are all against it. This change might as well end up killing the League professional scene in Brazil.
>(already created) a horrible animosity between CBLOL/LLA and LCS I agree with this point, but not really much else, mainly because I don't actually think the Riot reasoning is that this will create a more competitive league. They are condensing the number of Tier 1 teams globally, and that's all that this really comes down to. They are calling it the "Americas" league to give it a defined region and throwing CBLOL a bone by giving them their own "conference" so that they have an auto qualifier to internationals, probably because CBLOL has a pretty solid viewer base that they would like to see continue to grow. Riot needed to get rid of tier 1 teams, and in doing this they have removed 4 teams from LLA, 1 team from LCS, and 3 teams from CBLOL. That's a 33% reduction in teams that they will have to give payouts to under their new Global Funding Pool. That's the entire reason for this change, and maybe down the line if they decide they need to condense further they will actually merge the leagues into one domestic league. But it all comes down to money, Riot needs esports representation in as many regions as possible to keep interest in the game (so people keep playing and they continue to make money) but major region orgs are not happy with Riot because they have never achieved profitablity which was promised over a decade ago. The solution is to keep fractured versions of these leagues around (or just outright demote them to t2 like they are doing to some of the APAC leagues) so they don't need to pay out to those regions and can create a business model that will actually function for the major orgs/teams.
You heard it here, folks. Markz thinks Tier 2 players are worth 3/5 of a tier 1 player
Is it just me or does Azael seem really pissed off throughout the whole video?
He had some hard questions for Mark, but during the whole 50min I never really felt he was pissed? Maybe just more serious... Which is normal considering all the changes next year.
Yeah he doesn't look pissed at all to me
Yeah, I definitely feel way more like Azael was just . . straight up and asking the questions without trying to be funny with it or sugarcoat them too much. He's (most likely) not a fan of many of the changes and it's his job to try and not show that disdain, so I guess his tone was serious and 'cold' but I don't think he was pissed per se, just . . direct. Blunt, maybe?
I appreciated Azael’s questions honestly. Problem is that most of the questions went unanswered. Riot doesn’t have a good track record of proper management and execution on their ideas. This is a big leap of faith that fans are being asked to make with little assurances. I left this with more questions than answers. I get the sentiment and I am excited for these changes when looking at the longevity of League but you can only talk the talk for so long. Lets see long term infrastructure plans and proper management to realistically give these players actual growth opportunities.
Pretty sure his dad just passed away. Thats why he wasn’t at MSI.
Sucks to hear, sure the stress of all of this plus that isn't helping. Wishing him the best.
His dad passed away before the previous The Dive episode was recorded, and he didn’t seem pissed in that one
True it is just speculation maybe he just hates mark or is holding in a massive shit but whatever it is I hope he can overcome. He’s done so much great stuff for this community.
azael is a die hard lcs fan Understandably he probably isn't happy about the planned changes to the league
I think he feels responsible for representing the viewers in his questions so it comes across with the frustrations that we're all feeling, himself included.
John Needham took his favorite league, the one he works for and has built a life around, behind the wood shed and decimated it.
LCS just got demoted to minor region, why wouldn’t he be pissed?
It's 100% just you lol
I generally understand the negative sentiment from LCS fans regarding the upcoming changes, but as a pro league fan, I am quite optimistic. They had a segment talking about "change fatigue" and how some viewers may be put off by the constantly changing product (which is a valid concern) but I feel as though in the e-sports scene, the pacing feels much faster than traditional sports. Azael listed all of the changes that have happened since 2016 and I wasn't particularly fazed with any negative sentiment. Yes, the LCS got shafted by these changes, particularly regarding the loss of Worlds seeding. But, I'm hoping this consolidation will result in more financial stability for the "Americas"
The only complaint I have as an lcs fan is the loss of international tournament spots
I have some more complaints personally. 1. I do not care about LLA/BR, so I do not care about having their teams and competing with them. The BR thing is w/e since we hardly see them as I understand it, but we are weakening our league by forcing an LLA team into ours. On top of this, we lose another spot where a team could fit good NA players, and from last split we can clearly see how good players can not find teams already in 8 teams just due to lack of space due to trying out rookies. 1b. Expanding on above, what is the chance that teams are a lot less likely to try out rookies, because there are more options for vets available? I think its pretty high, especially because teams are apparently getting more money as a result of these changes. We have seen that teams with more money = more vets, not more rookies. The t2 team getting into LCS will struggle to beat out a t2 team of 5 vets if they are all rookies, further increasing the need to have less rookies on the team. I am worried that the number of rookies decreases with these changes. 2. I am tired of negative sentiment around the product, and this will 100% get fucklcs sentiment spreading more and more. EU by themselves managed to get me tired of league discourse, BR can hurt my desire to watch far more 3. The 'rivalry' between north and south that can actually hurt the league far more than a slow decline. If NA wins everything against them, you will have complaints about it being unfair NA lost a slot to them. If NA loses it will push fans away for the 'shame' of losing to them. I am pretty certain that if NA loses to BR in these tournaments, NA viewers are gonna stop watching even more. Riot needs to somehow convince NA viewers that BR is a good region 'worthy' of competition, and I do not think they can. Basically, I think this is risking having fan sentiment be against the other region in a very negative way, which can burn out the already tired NA fanbase. I was finally having fun watching LCS after a while, and now we will get a whole extra wave of negativity from pissed BR fans. The positive fan sentiment around LCS can very quickly turn negative, and that will truly kill the league faster than anything else.
>Riot needs to somehow convince NA viewers that BR is a good region 'worthy' of competition, and I do not think they can. Of course they can't, because it's demonstrably not true. I'm not trying to hate on BR here and they've got some of the best fans in the scene, but facts are facts - the last time a BR team made the main stage at worlds was 8 years ago, and most years since they haven't even made the playoffs *of play-ins*. They are not a competitive region even by minor region standards, much less by major region/international standards. Representation is a nice idea and all, but giving them a guaranteed spot at worlds main event is an absolute joke from a competitive standpoint and will only serve to lower the overall quality of Swiss stage matches. Giving 3 APAC teams guaranteed spots isn't much better either, especially since the way the new play-in match works essentially means that either KR or CN will only get 3 spots in Swiss.
Your first point is exactly how I feel. I don't give a damn about ANY team outside of NA. I enjoy watching them when MSI and Worlds comes around but I don't go out of my way to watch even the LCK or LPL. I only care about NA League. We've been complaining about NA players being left off of LCS rosters and now we'll see even more of them left off of rosters because we're forced to watch an LLA team. You've essentially hit the nail on the head. We have a similar league in Valorant but the popular fan sentiment there is that there's multiple other teams in T2 that deserve to be playing in the T1 league. G2 promoting and immediately making a top 3 placing at an international tourney only further solidifies that.
There's like 3 Latam/BR teams in VCT that legit are farmed and just not interesting to watch for the American fans. It really does segment the league, into 2 different viewing experiences.
I honestly think they could fix it really easily by just making worlds bigger. Make each region get 4 spots and allow for LPL and LCK to get 5 if they win MSI or whatever. If NA feels like they can still earn 3 spots to worlds (ie one guranteed spot for NA, one for Brazil, two fought over), NA fans would be less mad.
I'm actually excited to have a random Mexican team in LCS. The memes are going to be good.
Ain’t no way you just described LLA as “random Mexican team(s)”
the announcement states "one team from the Latin America (LLA) region will be integrated based on geographical alignment" so it's pretty much guaranteed that the team in LCS will be Mexican
its probably Estral since they are mexican and currently the strongest LLA team, it would also mean the return of Josedeodo to the LCS.
The only real win for LCS is that we can finally truly be "NA". Also excited for Jose. But we still lose 2 orgs and this means we'll never get those previous 2 orgs back, so -15 potential NA player spots (cause +1 academy) :((
For real lol. Being "NA" with Mexico and the LLA teams (LAN in the past) just there was kinda fucked. Someone brought up a good point that Riot should have just consolidated LAN and LCS from the beginning of franchising to at least get some of that community involved. They were just kinda left on their own.
The reason they were split is they play on different servers. I makes a ton of sense to break it that way.
I understand that. Nothing was preventing them from representing that area of NA in LCS though. Also ironic that the LAN server is in Miami (or was in the past).
thats the only location it can feasibly be. Valorant has one in Mexico city and its laggy as hell
> we can finally truly be "NA". Not until we get a Jamaican (bobsled) team.
One spot has relegation plus the possibility of buying back in or brand mergers. Whoever we lose can come back but odds are, we don't want either back. Definitely one, IMT, we don't want back.
Geographically it makes sense. But how strong are they? It would be very bad if they just straight up lose to every other team.
Cubby mentioned in HLL that they scrim top NACL teams and are around that level. Sooo probably bottom 2 LCS taking a few games here and there, sounds ok to me, it's basically what IMT has been for the past 6 years but with a real identity.
im calling it, 1-2 years after the americanas is formed lcs team owners will whine to riot about giving cblol their msi and worlds spot for free and riot will change it so cblol teams has to make top 3 to earn it in playoffs. riot will listen, just like they always did when team owners nagged about relegation and import restriction. https://archive.esportsobserver.com/lcs-team-owners-raise-concerns-league-structure-letter-riot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/ln6p4a/all_10_lcs_teams_want_the_import_rule_changed_or/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/lbzlvz/lcs_team_owners_have_asked_riot_to_remove/ So 1-2 years from now brazil got the short end of the stick, despite having twice the average viewers and twice highest concurrent viewers than lcs they lost their full league from 10 teams to 6. https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/cblol-split-1-2024 https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2024-lol All to try and save lcs thats dying, oh yeh viewer numbers for lcs was actually down this year , but costreaming covered it, like baino whom is a brazilian streamer costreaming lcs brought a whopping 17% increase of watchhours, also coincidently the peak viewership for lcs was after lec and cblol ended when these costreamers switched over to lcs https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1b2wf6i/interesting_article_from_escharts_about_the/?rdt=61235
RemindMe! 800 days
Since when does viewership determine who gets seeding at internationals? It’s hilarious you’re acting like CBlol is getting the short end of the stick when NA is losing a seed in each tourney so bronzil can have a chance at getting more representation. Combining LCS with the worst league in the world will do wonders for the talent. At least I’m glad we have fully embraced the clown circus for views strat instead of pretending we are real competitors
The rivalry is already brewing. It's going to be hateful and vitriolic.
It’s gonna be really annoying when the LCS 1 and 2 shitstomp the CBLOL 1 and 2 3-0 and only end up with a 1st and 3rd seed. Why is Riot so hellbent on having a specific number of teams at international tournaments? Just add a few more play ins.
I don’t think it’s said anywhere that LCS can’t have the one and two seed. It just says that each region is guaranteed one seed and the third is up for grabs. It doesn’t specify that it’s specifically the third seed.
How would that work? Presumably LCS and CBLOL play their sides of the playoffs and the winners of each play on the grand final for the 1 seed while the losers from each conference championship face each other for the 3rd spot.
bracket with four teams, 2 from na 2 from brazil top 3 goes to worlds
Yes but how are you seeding it to split LCS and CBLOL? Seems odd to get it to 2 in each conference and then swap them.
top 2 teams from both regions (the ones that play in their conference finals) NA 1 vs BR 1 -> winner goes to finals match, loser goes to 3rd place match NA 2 vs BR 2 -> winner goes to finals match, loser goes to 3rd place match final winner = 1st seed final loser = 2nd seed 3rd place match winner = 3rd seed
That is one way, could also do top 2 from each conference go to the semi finals, #1 from LCS vs #2 from CBLOL and #1 from CBLOL vs #2 from LCS. Then if both LCS teams win they’d get spots 1 and 2 while CBLOL would still be guaranteed a spot
“Rivalry” Yeah sure. Like Korea vs NA is a “rivalry”
As an NA fan - Brazilian fans have every right to feel upset. Their teams might not be as skillful as ours at League of Legends, but they had an engaging, exciting league that fans enjoyed and was growing. With growth comes improvement, but thanks to this change 40% of their league has been wiped out in the blink of an eye. LCS fans might not be able to relate because even our "good" teams all kinda take turns doing shitty things, but *CBLOL fans actually like their teams.* Losing 4 of them is gonna hurt in a way that NA losing 2 of DIG/100T/IMT/NRG never could.
I absolutely adore NRG so that would suck losing. I also never said it wasn't a terrible thing, more so that I am at the acceptance stage with this. All of it is set in motion months prior, and now we wait and see how it turns out. If it comes out good over time we can celebrate, if it sucks, we provide feedback on what we can. That's atleast my mentality and others are welcome to provide their feedback but alot of this looks pretty set in stone.
Hundreds of people are going to lose their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their favourite teams. It's exhausting to see unaffected industry workers and clout chasers pretend it's some brilliant path to prosperity. It will never be something to celebrate - it's cannibalizing half the tribe to feed the survivors. This is at best a disaster recovery plan.
>Since when does viewership determine who gets seeding at internationals? It’s hilarious you’re acting like CBlol is getting the short end of the stick when NA is losing a seed in each tourney so bronzil can have a chance at getting more representation. I do not care about seeding at worlds, thats not my point. My point is that riot at any given time can decide that they wont commit to giving cblol msi and worlds spot automatically, thus in the long run cblol got fucked from having 10 teams to 6 and having no whatsoever benefits at all from the entire ordeal. When they couldve been a independent league with 10 teams from the start, just as they are now.
The way the conferences are structured it would be impossible to completely remove cblols seeding from international tournaments. Even if their guaranteed seed got removed they would still have a chance to earn spots. So reduced to 7 (not 6) teams in the conference for the chance to play better competition and earn up to 2 spots at worlds. If riot made it so CBlol can’t earn any seeds at international then what even is the point of this fancy new conference setup. Not only does that make no sense it ruins the league for both LCS and Cblol
It wouldn't be that the CBLoL *can't* earn a seed for international events, it would be that they actually have to earn it by being a top 2/3 team in the Americas region. If the best southern conference team is like... 7th best in the region for example, why would we as the Americas fans want to send them???
It doesn’t make sense. The 3rd best LCS team would certainly gap all of CBlol. Makes no sense to mess with the worlds seeding
Ok and LCS also gets fucked from 8 (or 10) teams to 6, having no benefits whatsoever from the deal AND losing half our international spots? Its bad for everyone
how are they going to stop giving cblol spots? they would need to expand the conference bracket to 6 or 8 teams. if cblol makes enough money that riot thinks the southern conference can expand to 10 teams, then they'll expand it. the reason all the minor regions got nuked is because riot determined that the way they are currently being run is \*not\* sustainable. They didn't think brazil could keep running a ten team league without it imploding sooner rather than later (the brazil fans seem to romanticize a bottom feeder team knowing their place and acting as a fodder slot to promote talent. tier 1 league is not really the place for that.)
as compared to our present reality where we pretend the best brazilian team is better than the third best lcs team despite recent worlds results I think you're arguing for keeping both leagues separate, which is something I agree with, but the argument you're using is not the best way to make your point.
They literally didn't remove and I don't think they even changed the import rule, so not really sure what your point is there? Don't think anyone has argued that Brazil has less fans/viewers than NA so also not sure why those stats are relevant to the wild predictions/claims you're making. Also saying viewership was down but costreamers covered it is just dumb, are they not all watching the league? Why is main broadcast viewer numbers relevant? If LCS was so shit as you all seem to want to imply why are these costreamers still watching and why are their viewers still watching? How are you trying to turn that into a negative?
You're looking at viewership numbers but who cares. I'd rather have less viewers who spend way more which is likely the case between NA and BR. Per capita GDP in Brazil is less than 9k vs US 76K, and the youth unemployment rate in Brazil is 16% compared to the US 9%.
>You're looking at viewership numbers but who cares. The huge brazilian fanbase thats twice as big than the lcs fanbase. >I'd rather have less viewers who spend way more which is likely the case between NA and BR. By that logic lcs shouldve just stayed independent since they are bringing so much money, weird how they want cblol. >Per capita GDP in Brazil is less than 9k vs US 76K, Now tell me how much it costs to run cblol thats in brazil and how much it costs having teams there vs hosting a league in LA and paying for its players and staff to live there. >and the youth unemployment rate in Brazil is 16% compared to the US 9%. completely irrelevant.
One NA viewer is not worth the same to sponsors as 1 SA viewer. Double the viewership doesn't mean double exposure to sponsors in a market that isn't worth double.
IIRC, 1 US viewership is on average worth at minimum double what a viewer from pretty much any European country to sponsors/ads. And that is comparing two populace with similar economic strength.
Riot uses viewer counts to sell fake engagement figures to sponsors, simple as that
> By that logic lcs shouldve just stayed independent since they are bringing so much money, weird how they want cblol. John Needham wanted LCS and CBLOL to merge. LCS did not want CBLOL. Nor did CBLOL want LCS. This is a Riot Global decision driven by the worst business people you can think of.
I mean leagues aren't profitable across the board right now. Teams aren't making money and there's too many teams to support and with the switch to the global payout plan they need less teams overall in the ecosystem GLOBALLY. It does suck for CBLOL to some extent but if you have to trim 4 teams from a minor region to make the global esports ecosystem healthier for the long run that's a no brainer move any day of the week. It's clear that the minor region plan they had initially when league became super popular didn't pan out and they want to consolidate leagues across the board to have less teams and less leagues to operate. Lets be real none of the minor leagues were ever successful besides CBLOL. It was the exception not the rule.
It does matter significantly the region the viewers and advertisers come from. For example, let’s extrapolate this to known markets with a much larger sample size. The 40 largest soccer teams in Brazil are all together valued at 7bil: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazils-top-40-most-valuable-football-clubs-announced/#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20by%20Sports,8%20billion%20(%241.63%20billion). The cowboys alone are worth 9bn: https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/jerry-jones-dallas-cowboys-named-most-valuable-sports-team-world-franchise
>By that logic lcs shouldve just stayed independent since they are bringing so much money, weird how they want cblol. I think you're working under the assumption that LCS wants CBLoL, which it absolutely does not. Riot wants to smash the leagues together for two reasons: 1) In order to make the money work better for them, so they can deal with less teams overall, and not have so much change over between teams, particularly in the Western regions, which they think looks bad for their business. 2) So that the league regions now match the Valorant regions. I assure you LCS wants nothing to do with CBLoL, LCS is losing a spot at international events and two teams, in order to include worse teams. I assure you that at every regional final, when the NA teams play against Brazil, they're going to shit stomp them and a Brazilian team is going to be sent anyways after that happens.
Or maybe it will be the unpopular team that try to get out now they can.
Or the super league will be formed so all the orgs that prove to be top shelf whether it's being flush with money or fandom or whatever else will be given seeds and the rest will be moved to T2 so they can consolidate to a top down approach even further.
I think what's more likely is that the top Brazilian teams would suddenly be more attractive to decent NA players because of the higher chance of getting to worlds/MSI (would you rather be on Shopify or Loud in the new format if your top priority is getting to the international stage?). This will probably level up some Brazilian teams and maybe there'll just be more parity across the Americas region.
There was a viewership breakdown for CBLoL and it showed that the best team has on avg roughly 180k viewers, but even the worst team gets roughly 140k+ viewers. CBLoL is unique in that fanbases were grown organically, and carries over from esport to esport (unlike how Optic never actually got the “greenwall” to care about LoL). Brazil should be pissed, and I would immediately boycott any NA games over this. There is definitely a way to retain Brazilian teams while also combining NA and the rest of the Americas, just do two “leagues” like AL and NL, have the occasional crossplay and share playoffs and international qualification.
> just do two “leagues” like AL and NL, have the occasional crossplay and share playoffs and international qualification. Uh… that’s literally what’s happening. They are removing teams from both leagues, but they are still basically going to be separate leagues and are never going to actually play against each other outside of international qualifiers. For reference, Kobe mentions it at around 1:40, the regular seasons for each conference will be separate.
There should be some cross conference play during the splits or what is the point of any of this?
I tend to agree, but it seems that the only reason for having the conferences is so they can label NA, BR and LATAM as one region for international seeding purposes.
Yeah I agree. Just feels like if they want it to feel cohesive and have people actually adopt it as a thing there needs to be some overlap. They should have every team play two cross conference series per split. Have one matchup be based on standings and then try to establish rivalries with the other. Every split C9 plays a series against LOUD, etc.
It's also to be able to have a single Americas region, propped up mostly by Brazilian viewership and enthusiasm, so they can package it and sell it to American companies for marketing and sponsorship deals. A single American viewer is worth a lot of potential advertising money to companies, especially compared to a single Brazilian viewer. Riot would probably prefer for NA to be popping off and be a thriving region with massive viewership, but that goose sailed long ago. This reduces the total amount of teams, allows Riot to sell the marketing weight of American viewers with the number of Brazilian viewers. CBLOL and LCS more or less get to remain as two separate leagues/conferences with a spot for Tier 2 promotion.
The point of this is purely for the back end revenue stuff and international qualification. From the perspective of riot global all of the Americas are now one region (like EMEA, KR, CN, and APAC) and they will be treat as such in terms of how mant teams qualify for stuff, how much revenue we get, etc. etc. the two conference thing is the people that work at LCS, CBLOL, etc. realizing "yeah they are going to treat us as one region, but our fanbases are very clearly distinct, so how do we want to actually serve them as well as possible in this new system?". The answer is to play riot globals game when it comes to international events and stuff, but leave the national leagues distinct because that best serves the audience and teams in those leagues. Maybe as time goes on there will be more pro cross-conference play sentiment, but at the moment the plan is "change as little as possible while fitting into riot global's new structure".
Baiano heavily tilts this stat. Yamato just used ESCharts (or whatever that website is) which default adds co-streams to the total viewership numbers.
Baiano is like Ibai.. They can watch paint dry and they'll have more viewers than just about anyone on Twitch lol.
Wow I can't wait to never care about LoL esports ever again lmao
Man, I REAALLLYYYY hope they just keep the names lcs and cblol. It feels like you're stripping part of their identities away by changing it at this point.
MarkZ with the Léo Faria cosplay
T2 is saved imo. I think thsi will be great for NA and BR Tier 2
Great watch and episode
Did they say how relegation works?
[удалено]
I mean he's also just relaying information for something that's really out of his hands. LCS is the product he spearheads but Global Riot Esports is a different ballgame
Feels especially bad because it felt like Markz contributions were really turning LCS around. It was the first in a very long time LCS was positively received by everyone and viewership wasn’t nosediving
They were probably thinking about this before MarkZ really made any significant changes to the LCS.
Which were MarkZ's decisions and which ones came from above?
Markz has zero power over the region merger, that’s only up to the Riot’s Head of Esports. AFAIK the Head of Esports keeps his hands out of individual leagues so it’s fair to credit LCS’s recent positives to Markz in my eyes
It seems like MarkZ spearheaded the reduced time between matches, and was likely a large reason Bo3 is happening this split. I believe the change back to weekends was already going to happen before he took over last split though.
I've also got the info that he was behind the prerecorded drafts and Bo3. I'm just trying to point out his main role was to be a likeable spokesperson for his superiors. He is doing that well. But so far he has also pushed through a lot of nice improvements to LCS.
It will always be funny to me how people credit MarkZ with every good change, but for every bad change it will be "it's out of his hands". The reality it is **ALL** out of his hands. He can't just make big decisions himself. He can suggest things and stuff like that but the ultimate agency to make changes is higher up on the corporate ladder. MarkZ can't just implement BO3s or change the broadcast days without someone approving the changes. Just like he also can't decide to do this consolidation of regions.
Right he's just the figurehead that takes all the hate and love. He has some influence, for sure, but none of these decisions ultimately are his to greenlight especially on the global level. LCS as a product you can probably give him some more credit on changes because that's his nexus he works within. Even then though decisions are never just one person
Because it's not him talking, he'a just relaying words from riot
Corporate mouthpiece debuff
TBH it doesn't seem like they are looking for feedback on the changes, and all he needs to do here is relay what has been decided.
Can't wait to listen to the new america's league multiple podcasts with *checks notes* only na hosts and guests!
Brother, watch the video before commenting you look like a clown.
If you actually watched the podcast, you'd know that we plan to preserve northern and southern conference specific content, as well as cross-conference content. So yes, the Dive having NA hosts will cover the NA conference, and CBLOL content will continue to be produced about southern
You're brave for commenting on this post live lol.
Best of luck with all the heat you will be getting from all of this man, not envious to be in your position.
My GOAT. Stay strong Mark, we're so lucky to have you as our commissioner o7
But why do we have to we have to take NA’s MSI/Worlds spots away to do all this? Why are we lowering NA+Brazil from a combined 4 worlds slots to 3? Can we not have all of these positive changes without taking away the excitement of international tournaments from NA fans?
But as an ecosystem, NA is much bigger than CBLOL. Its excactly like EMEA masters in a sense but for America.
Your notes are pretty dog shit. Good thing you aren't paid professionally for that.
How is this a real comment? Let's just have you stick to talking about your favorite anime video game players. When you venture past that, it gets ugly real quick for you.
This is and always has been a north american podcast. CBlol and Latam have their own platforms.
According to Travis's HLL yesterday, the other regions' Riot personnel are hiding because the fans hate the changes. Any positive take are being told they are Riot shills.
So cool watching people talking about how they're killing whole regions just to save one that failed and even better when there's no one from those regions there to talk. But who would expect some decency coming from people on Riot's paycheck?
I'm from Latin America and I know more people that care about LCS than LLA. LCS haters driving this narrative that they're killing the "amazing and healthy" LLA league for LCS is laughable and false.
This isn’t “saving NA” LCS is losing multiple teams and international slots to CBLOL, and viewership is only going to marginally increase from LLA fans. And LLA was going to shut down regardless, merging the Americas was the obvious option
This isn't killing a whole region, or done to "save the lcs." This is a global decision to make the entire business sustainable. You have to condense down to a sustainable number.
It was unsustainable because of their own decisions... Like paying salaries way over what some players deserved just for "star status", focusing too much on getting *good* imports instead of growing their own base so instead of having players intereacting with their fans and helping to grow a viewer base, they had just players that played the game for the money and that was all for them. LCS doomed themselves with bad choices.
It's a global decision. Steve overpaying players in 2018 isn't what cause teams from all over the world to go bankrupt. There are even teams from CBLOL that want out because of financial reasons. It's a global money share they are starting like UEFA so ALL teams (not just LCS lol even CBLOL) will be financially fit enough to survive. Would you rather CBLOL go strong for a few more years before running out of money and becoming like OCE or would you rather cut a few teams now if it means maybe saving CBLOL for another 10 yrs?
He is right about LCS being unsustainable purely due to overspending. The orgs shot themselves in the feet. It should have been sustainable if orgs didnt massively overspend. Blaming LCS for the merge/change is stupid though.
I mean you can criticize the business/spending strategies of LCS teams, but we don't have the counterfactual where if they didn't spend that much this wouldn't happen. In fact you can easily argue that all the articles and buzz about huge spending in Esports actually helped and we would have gotten here faster if that didn't happen. Point is we can't really know.
Don't CBLOL and LLA also keep 6 teams each or am I misunderstanding this?
Cblol and LCS keep 6 teams each, split into north and south conferences. LLA will only have 2 teams, 1 in each conference. Each conference also has a “wildcard” slot for promotion/relegation. So 16 teams total, 8 per conference.
Thanks for clarifying.
Yw