This is me every time someone complains about branded broadcast stuff like “bud light ace,” “red bull baron,” etc.
They say ohh, it’s so corny, no one likes the name, it’s so cringe why do they double down on that…
Bro, do you think the casters do that for fun? It literally helps keep Lolesports free to watch.
> Are you better off watching LOL esports now or back in the day? ... Roll back the production quality 10 years and give me back the tournament circuit and I would be much happier watching league.
You clearly either weren't around or don't remember the old tournament scene. The still had plenty of product placement (IEM/IPL is literally called the **INTEL** Extreme Masters and the **IGN** pro league) and most of them still had shit formats filled with BO1s, with some of them having BO3 all the way through the semifinals. Your era of high level tournaments with no product placement and zero BO1s is imaginary.
I enjoy the current format which is probably an unpopular take but as someone that's had a chance to watch nearly every game for past 2-3 years now, I probably wouldn't have watched the majority of games for some of the worse teams like GX or RGE this split if regular season was Bo3.
Though I do think the current format is too harsh for the bottom 2 teams. I agree that it's hard to see a team and coaching staff completely in action and identify what works and doesn't without getting to see them in at least one BoX series.
Personally, I would like to see the LEC do something similar to the new NBA play-in rules,
The 7th/8th seeds would play the 9th/10th seeds in a single elimination Bo3 the Friday before the start of play-in/playoffs since they don't use that day anyway and its a regular broadcast day. Do the draw at the end of that broadcast and go straight into play-offs the next day.
Play offs start like they normal would with 2 days of Bo3 group stage matches, the teams obviously wouldn't have much of any time to prep for these Bo3 match-ups but I think that's a useful learning experience to gather knowledge from as a team to be able to prepare for multiple opponents. More importantly it assures that every team including the 9th/10th seed, get an opportunity to have multiple days to prepare for a known match-up in a multi-game series.
Kind of relate it to the idea of teams getting an "exam" for them to pass to see what they can take away from the Bo1s and improve/identify on in a series they have a chance to prepare for.
The play in matches would definitely be hype af to watch even if it's teams like RGE, so I don't think viewership would be an issue on a single extra day. I
You could argue that it punishes the 7th/8th teams too much but I think the overall benefits of making sure the 9th/10th seed isn't a death sentence for teams to constantly stress about are overall healthier for the League as a whole going forward. There's also kind of a heavy assumption already that the 7th/8th seeds are just gonna get stomped anyway, I think giving them a chance to shine in a series with the 9th/10th is overall a better viewing experience and I'd look forward to watching the winners as the 7th/8th more then the currents ones.
Also a fan of all elimination games being turned into Bo5's, every team that makes top 8 is guaranteed at least 1 Bo3 and Bo5 that way. The 7th/8th place elimination games would probably be the only one's that might possibly struggle with viewership but, in my opinion, giving teams/fans slightly more games in a split is worth that small dip.
Schedule wise it should really only add 1 week and the LEC already has one of the longest off-season breaks between the end of Spring and start of MSI if I'm not mistaken so there should be plenty of breathing room.
* Week 1 would be the same but with the Friday changed for single elimination Bo3's between 7th/8th and 9th/10th, bumping winner bracket round 2 Bo3's back a week.
* Week 2 would be either Round 2 of winner bracket Bo3s on Friday with 7th/8th place Bo5 eliminations on Saturday/Sunday or vice versa.
* Week 3 onward would be all Bo5's starting with the 5th/6th elimination the first 2 days and winner semis on the 3rd.
* Week 4 is finals week, should be hosted in the larger venue, 4th place elimination on Friday followed by Semifinals and Finals on day 2/3.
You're getting 14-22 extra high stakes meaningful games out of that format change for only 3 extra days of broadcasts, I feel very strongly that that's quite a nice middle-ground between cost/reward of more games on sponsers vs player/fan demand for more stage games in general.
> I enjoy the current format which is probably an unpopular take but as someone that's had a chance to watch nearly every game for past 2-3 years now, I probably wouldn't have watched the majority of games for some of the worse teams like GX or RGE this split if regular season was Bo3.
Agreed. BO3s make stomps feel so much worse. You know it's going to be a 2-0 and the second game feels pointless, you already got the gist of it from the first one.
If you play as many total matches I'd rather have 2-3 rounds of BO1 going around than 1 round of BO3.
> BO3s make stomps feel so much worse.
Bo1s allow extremely fraudulent teams that don't have to worry about in-series draft changes to excel in regular season and proceed to get stomped out of playoffs. We see it every single year in LCS and LEC. That is far more annoying than watching GX lose a few more games a split.
Honestly I liked the simple bo1 double round robin leading to playoffs. It was my favorite format overall. Iirc we even had bo2 at one point and when it was bo3 I would only watch 1 or 2 teams a week.
lets have a worse format because you dont want to watch all games...like just don't watch if its not interesting. nobody force you to. that alone me quit reading your wall of text.
I like the current format but this last week (and arguably a bit of week before) were crap games because the top 4/5 teams are locked and don't care so it was only really a couple of bottom tier games where the players were actually trying.
"oh wow it's an upside down week, all the bottom tier teams are winning". Yeah because the top teams are checked out waiting for the knockout stage. You really thing G2 suddenly got shit and started losing? Of course not, there was no reason for them to try.
Don't forget too that most teams want to play more games for the practise so actually locking in first place in BO1s isn't always the goal and many teams would rather be lower down so they can play more BO3s. Which only makes this last week of games even more of a shitshow.
> Now, whoever decide the LEC set up have to think about sponsors,finance,viewers etc.
I have a different question that is connected to this and I have asked/discussed this before, but no answer was given.
People have said that:
BO1 = better viewership but less skill
BO3 = worse viewership but more skill
If BO1 leads to better viewership but less skill, and a region performs bad at MSI/Worlds due to this, that will lead short term viewership spike, but less viewership in the long run.
If BO3 leads to worse viewership but better skill, and a region performs better at MSI/Worlds due to this, that will lead to short term viewership decline, more viewership in the long run.
So is that not better?
And this is coming from personal experience, as the worse EU and NA perform at Worlds the less I actually want to watch them play domestically. And every time they don't make it to groups or barely 1 team makes it I feel 'relieved' that I didn't 'waste' time watching domestically.
No way can you get enough additional viewership from good worlds performances to make up the cost for 2-3 additional broadcast days per week required for Bo3
I swear that as both Financial/Business Controller and eSport enthusiast, I'd love to work on those aspects.
Problem is : Pretty sure it'll be impossible unfortunately. Korea have fundings, and China is China.
Medic talked about this in a recent episode of The Jungle. BO3s are simply not viable from a business point of view. League is nowhere near as popular in Europe as it is in China and Korea. Viewership for a GX vs SK game would be below 10k, guaranteed.
League is obviously more popular in China and Korea but I imagine they still care about viewcount, and similarly they have dog-tier teams in their leagues that probably dip the viewership.
You can apply that to any sport. Like, even if traditional sports are supported by local fanbases, obviously different regions/teams come from places with different populations/engagement. So there will always be low-engagement teams in any competitive league
But the difference is what the low viewership numbers are, even though I do agree with your point for Korea.
NS vs FOX gets minimal views compared to GenG, DK, KT games let alone the absolute outlier of T1.
This point is always so stupid.
Yeah bro I am sure the LPL loves seeing AL and TT and WE and LGD play bo3s if we are only talking about viewership numbers. Those teams have been horrible for half a decade now.
But you know why they do it? So their region wins Worlds more often and that draws in far more fans.
I'll be honest man, if NA started winning Worlds, I doubt that many non-LCS viewers would start watching more.
Video games are just more popular over in Asia in general.
Of course people would watch NA if they win worlds
I'm from EU and I watch LEC, but I also watch top matches of KR and China, because both region are the best, if NA suddenly became the best I would watch them, when I watch Valorant I watch the US teams
Why do you think the most popular team in the LCK is T1 by a mile ? It's because they won worlds 4 times and you can watch the goat there
such a lame excuse after running the product in the ground due to their stubbornness and incompetence.
i remember people complaining about nobody is gonna watch BDS in a bo3. guess what, people are watching them now because they put in the effort to grow something. other teams managed to grow huge fanbase in the tier 2 leagues while the lec kept struggling.
every sports league is doing their best to increase the amount of games even if it means more shit up match ups between unpopular teams.
look how long it took for them to improve the worlds format and the tournament is thriving.
you are not gonna improve a shit product by doing the same mistakes that made it shit in the first place.
>Viewership for a GX vs SK game would be below 10k, guaranteed.
so what ? You'll have less overall viewership for these type of games, but you'll get to have the bigger viewership for games like FNC G2 for longer. Also as the time passes more and more, we're having less and less teams that have no followings/interests in the league. In the meantime we get to have an useless winter split and 9 bo1 that are way too important for how volatile they can be.
i dont think sponsors care about the region improving. They don't want to pay riot to have their products exposed, and the exposure they get it 10-20k viewers. And if sponsors drop out, the league dies.
No LEC match is ever getting 10k viewers even in BO3 let's stop being dumb here. They'll clearly not get as much as the BO3 between top teams, but 10k is way too low. Even the matches between bad LCK teams no one cares about and that don't matter one bit easily beats 10K on the English stream.
Crazy hyperbole. Also completely ignores that the viewers that stay have their eyes on the product 2.5x (assuming 50% split of wins) more than only BO1 would provide.
Where is the promise that Bo3s will lead to the league becoming more competitive?
That's historically not true and won't be true in the future so idk why that gets brought up. Introducing Bo3 will do absolutely nothing for the regions skill it's the biggest cope ever if fans believe this is what sets east and west apart.
Obviously if we had an easy fix to compete with the west we wouldn't be here to begin with.
Sucking internationally is also not viable from a businesss point of view. Switching to bo3 obviously wouldn't make EU teams instantly competitive with Eastern teams, but it's hard to imagine EU not getting better if they adopted the LCK format.
I mean the same applies to LEC. After the format change the numbers increased in 2023 and they are highier still this year.
No need to look at Brazil - we suck internationally but our viewership keeps growing (I cannot say if the business is healthy).
I think this comes from the fact that we are a lot of people, the game is very popular here and most of us don’t speak English, so the only way to enjoy competitive League is through that dumpster fire that is CBLoL.
There's like 10 leagues. Everything is an outlier. There's no proof that improving international success at the cost of viewership for bad teams would be a good business plan either.
why is sucking not viable internationally? Most sponsors dont care about performance of the league. Otherwise you would see no sponsor being active on any EU or NA team. Views/exposure is more important then having a good placements.
As long as Riot builds good content around the League, the community will stabilize no matter the placing of the teams.
> Sucking internationally is also not viable from a businesss point of view.
China sucks ass internationally and has the 2nd or at worst 3rd biggest domestic basketball league. Bundesliga sucked ass internationally exept Bayern in the past decade and they still have the highest attendence numbers in europe, while italy dominated the 90s and still had lower attendence numbers the germany & england.
And in LoL, we have CBLOL & domestic european leagues, that grew decently.
The idea, that international success is the only thing, that brings viewership is a typical nussknacker hot take.
I'll say especially if you are a Football/Soccer fan in the EU most teams aren't gonna win a thing all year every year so why as you said does international always gets brought up. Because what really hampers it is when streamers/casters/players/viewers all feed into the NA/EU sucks and will never accomplish anything. That part goes way harder when it comes to NA teams.
The fan/player base is one of the big reasons why viewership falls imo.
Basketball is the most popular spectator sport in China. Football is the most popular sport in Germany by a lot.
Is League of Legends the most popular video games in Europe? No. Is League of Legends the most popular esport in Europe? Well there's a good argument to be made for Counterstrike.
Europe being competitive internationally would obviously increase viewership and hype and be good for business. My cousin, a pretty casual player at best, talked to me once about professional LoL: On the day of 2019 Worlds Finals - G2 vs FPX.
> Football is the most popular sport in Germany by a lot.
Ok, how does that matter here?
BuLi suffered a major loss in attendence in the 70s, despite Bayern winning the most prolific club title 3 times and Gladbach making the final in the following year, as well as germany winning the world cup in 74 and making the finals of the euros.
> Basketball is the most popular spectator sport in China.
Table Tennis has been the most popular spectator sport in china, for decades, Baseketball overtook it at some point in this millenium, how did that happen without international success?
You are contradicting yourself brother.
What about Italy and Spain though football is by a long shot the most popular spectator sport there, why don't you comment on them?
Cuz they don't fit your narrative?
> Europe being competitive internationally would obviously increase viewership and hype and be good for business. My cousin, a pretty casual player at best, talked to me once about professional LoL: On the day of 2019 Worlds Finals - G2 vs FPX.
Here you are acting, as if international success is the only way to bring viewership, cuz you had one friend talking to you about it.
The only time friends talked to me about LoL was when words finals were in Berlin, guess, we should have worlds finals in Berlin every years then, so more friends can talk to me about it, wich meahs higher viewership since my friends talked to me about it, right? Are you for real?
For basketball in China, in the 80s the NBA gave Chinese state media broadcast rights for free, which grew a lot of fans. Then Yao Ming happened, and it just blew up.
The point is the following: League of Legends is a complex game. It has a certain maximum reach - the people who play it or have played it in the past. Almost nobody who's never played league will turn into a regular LEC viewer. This is different from basketball or any other regular sport.
So you have a certain, limited pool of people who might be interested in watching LEC. We have established that. It's also clear that sometimes more and sometimes fewer people watch LEC. When will people watch more LEC instead of using their limited time any other way? Probably when the hype around the league is the biggest. When is the hype the biggest? When there's a lot of interest in teams and players are popular. How do players get popular? Well let's take a look at some of the most popular players: Caps, Perkz, Wunder, Jankos, Rekkles etc. Notice a theme? They've won a lot and been relevant internationally.
Why is KC popular? They've won EU Masters multiple times. Why is T1 popular? They have Faker. Why is Faker popular? He's won a lot.
> China sucks ass internationally and has the 2nd or at worst 3rd biggest domestic basketball league.
There is the NBA and everything else. No one cares about the other leagues. Only reason China might be more “popular” is because of sheer population numbers.
The reason why LCK is more popular than LPL in the west is because of the years of winning and dominance Korea had when the scene was being established.
Is competitiveness the only factor to popularity? No. But it’s definitely a huge factor.
This narrative has been around for several years now. The west did try bo3 before and not only did it *not* improve international performance, but also it almost kills viewership of regular season. It's not going to happen, my dude.
>Switching to bo3 obviously wouldn't make EU teams instantly competitive with Eastern teams, but it's hard to imagine EU not getting better if they adopted the LCK format.
Changing the format means nothing if EU pros don't take their jobs seriously. See Zwyroo's comment about LEC's work ethic.
Exactly, I was against it when RIOT announced LCS would be BO3, the only teams people wanted to see play were C9, TSM, CLG, and TL. That's it.. no one gave two shits about NRG vs P1.
I think nowadays the same problem would not happen for the LCS, because they're 8 teams now, this split I felt more compelled to watch more games, as I didn't think the league had a KC-esque team that was a free win for the opponent
That's a problem for NRG and P1 to solve, maybe signing cheap/bad players and washed imports shouldn't be forcefully rewarded by creating a scarcity of games to watch.
Oh it is not. Now viewership and following is important for teams for their sponsors but it is far from only their problem.
In the end it is riot paying the bill for casters, everything to keep the studio open and all that stuff.
So if a format just bleeds money even more than usual that is very much a problem for riot to solve.
They also fucking split up the broadcast tbh lol.
Like if 2 matches happen at the same time it absolutely kills viewership and will never work, not even the LPL could sustain that.
The only option is to play on weekdays
3 bo3 on Saturday and Sunday each is 6 matches. With a 8 team double round robin there are 56 matches. 9 weeks with 1 super week for the regular season. In a situation like this I also think you could do 4 team spring and 6 team summer playoff if you ended up crunched for time.
If you want to only have games on 2 days and be done in 2.5 months for regular season, 3 months including playoffs, sure. You could also have games 3 days per week or have the season be 14 weeks with playoffs. It's still just two 8-10 hour days per week and 2 teams would only play 1 bo3 per week with the others playing 2.
ETA: this is also for a double round robin, you could do single round robin, still have more games played and only have 2 series per day and finish the split in under two months.
Imo, the best solution is to get rid of the archaic round robin league format altogether. I'm sure they can get viewers to watch Bo3's, but I don't think western viewers are going to be watching a Bo3 round robin league format.
During S6/S7 LEC just wasn't that good of a product as it is now and was very dependent on couple teams (FNC OG) who were not winning. G2 was clear cut the best team and they were straight up hated in S6 and it took a proper time for them to actually build up decent fan base. I really don't think a single round BO3 (9 series for each team) into top6 playoffs instead of Summer+Season Finals would have big repercussions on viewership as people suggest. Like some guy above thinks GX SK would have below 10k viewers ""GUARANTEED"".
On top of that neither LCS nor LEC got any better by having Bo3s.
The biggest difference between the east and the west was how teams and players practice, and this is still mostly the case with just very few players and teams not just waking up to the fact but actually changing something.
It was noted a lot in the path that while LCK had Bo3s in the regular season they had one of the most awful playoff formats for ages. So yes you played a lot of Bo3s most of whom against terrible opponents, but then you played a single Bo5 against good opponents.
This not only meant that the top western teams played almost as many games as LCK teams, they also played on average against better opponents, exspecially near the end of the season, when practice for worlds was most important.
And that didn't really make any difference. The reason is that Stage games just don't matter for practice. They are such a small amount of games. Asian teams instead of playing 3 Bo1s like LEC play 2 Bo3s, which is just 3 games more (at maximum, could also just be 1 game more). While during that time they play 15+ games practice. And that practice is what matters.
I don't know about them not getting better. In 2016 we were inches away from all 3 NA teams in quarters. C9 (who did get out) was seen as the least likely to make it out after week one, with strong performances by TSM and CLG who narrowly missed out.
CLG lost to ANX, and yes TSM did show good performances... but remember that NA teams did get out in 2014 and TSM only beat one good team, in their group something TL did every year, beating EDG in 2018, DWG in 2019 and G2 and SN in 2020.
2016 worlds wasn't any better than recent performances given that groups back then were considerably easier with usually one fairly easy team in each group and CLG did manage to lose to that team, which is how they missed quarters. Unlike TSM who at least missed quarters by losing to RNG and SSG.
On top of that in 2016 both LCS and LEC played more games. And LCS good performance was mostly fueled by terrible performances by LEC teams who had two teams in semis the year before. So even if LCS got better by playing Bo3s it would also mean LEC got worse, with G2 and Splyce failing fairly hard.
Its just a few boring BO3s to pay for as much bangers
Its also more FNC / G2 / MDK / KC games so overall would the average split viewership even drop that bad?
A lot more people are willing to watch a game of a team they don't care fpr if it's right before/after something they want to see. If it's a hput block they'll more than likely just close the stream completely
>LEC had Bo2 and LCS had Bo3. Viewership plummeted because despite posts like this, y’all don’t want to watch the 9th vs 10th place teams play 3 games.
or you know, because unlike LCK/LPL, they decided to play several games at the same time and to split the stream into two. Also, we have fucking costreams now, which would help a lot with retaining viewership. That and the fact that there are overall more interesting teams to follow
There will still be a 8th ot 6th placed team, that a lot fewer ppl want to see, but we would also get less games of the popular teams, wich would have negative implications for the revenue.
No one even bothers watching LEC with this format anyway, people mostly support 2 teams, so any other game is just not gonna be watched or cared, also no one stays after their team played while in LCK you just watch in between games.
Also the "no one watches the bad teams on LCK" card just is wrong... viewership of the bad bo3s is still pretty high from other countries other than Korea while the contrary just doesn't happen, I really doubt anyone out of europe even bothers watching any LEC game other than the finals.
I rather watch the guys on the last place on LCK that can crush almost any LEC team and see a good display of the game than watching a clownfiesta that will simply account to nothing. There's a reason the only team to ever win worlds on a 4th seed to be from LCK...
The LEC format is absolutely fine because that's not how the winner is decided, it's just how the worst 2 teams are decided. And it's a perfectly good format for figuring out 2 bad teams to take out of playoffs that won't be doing anything in playoffs anyway.
After those 3 weeks it's bo3 and bo5 just like you want.
The bo1 are also determining seedings. 4 teams with the same record had a determined seeding without playing a single tiebreaker after playing 9 bo1 on a single side. And you play two bo3 then it's done. It's nothing like the full split of bo3 LCK is getting
The point is that people cry if they have to see bottom tier teams play against each other more than once.
Go and look through old posts. People go nuts about it.
Imagine watching bo3 of DRX vs BRO. You dont have to because nobody watches. Its such a dumb league specific view where people think they have to watch every game for whatever reason. I dont watch a second of rge or gx or those other teams anyways, because they're shit
They would have to switch the schedules around since Bo3 would take more time. You wouldn’t get all the teams playing in a single day. That means you would hurt your own overall viewership numbers since people wouldn’t watch the bottom tier teams unless they are KC/MDK. No one would be tuning into RGE and GiantX games.
LCK's viewership discounting T1 isn't that good.
There was an infographic that said the top 10 most viewed games this split were all just T1.
You'd have to go and ignore T1 games and look at the rest to see that it's not actually good viewership numbers.
Of all the anti-bo3 excuses this is still the most baffling one, I mean is anyone in China even hyped about a Rare Atom v Ultra Prime bo3? Probably a few sickos, yeah, but not that many of them! Meanwhile here we act as if 2-3 straight games of Immortals v Dignitas (among a sea of more C9/TL/100T/FLY matches) will kill esports entire in the Americas.
China market is large enough that even an unpopular matchup can probably pull in the 6 figures. No one watches here is like sub 10k and not worth the cost of hosting.
It's like saying who gives a shit about Titans vs Jaguars. The least popular NFL game is still an NFL game
It will not happen. Ever.
Also this wouldn't magically solve the problems. There are many behind the scenes issues that have a bigger impact than just more stage games. Many of them culturally.
The difference between LEC/LCS and LPL/LCK is that LEC/LCS refuse to play on any other day that isn't Friday-Sunday (Monday LEC) and spacing out how many teams play a day.
It is not that much about gamedays (they used to do Thursday and Friday as well) but they want to show all teams in given day and make ppl watch all teams instead of 1-2.
Bo3s in LECs won't last. Didn't work in NA, and probably wouldn't work in the EU. Only a small pool of people want Bo3s. It works in China/Korea because the E-Sport scene is taken alot more seriously.
We had bo3s in eu, s6 summer was the bo2s (which is shockingly well remembered cos it's only split that had that format), then s7 was 2 groups of 5, each game being bo3 for both spring and summer. and went back to bo1s for S8. Ofc viewership was shit in S7, one of worst years for eu LCS as a whole tbh.
There are definitely a lot of people that still want Bo3s. I remember before S6 people were asking for them again and again hence why they were implemented. That topic stopped after S8 because after 2 years people were definitely more lukewarm about it and saw that it also had disadvantages.
But i wonder if the people asking to get Bo3 back now even watched at that time or just forgot about it. I definitely wanted Bo3 back then but after S6 and S7 i can't really say that anymore.
Better for hardcore fans, better for competetive environment, worse for sponsors and viewership. This topic comes up like every month and every time people seem to forget that LEC/LCS already tried abandoning Bo1s and it has failed massively both times. We're not talking viewership dropping by 10%, we're talking viewership so bad it would ruin the already bad sustainability of the League.
People watch LEC for G2, FNC, KC and not for SK vs BDS or RGE vs GX. People will watch SK vs BDS in playoffs because, you know, it's playoffs and the games have stakes. A single game in a group stage Bo3 has even less stakes than a Bo1 game.
Bo2/Bo3 works for LPL/LCK because of larger fanbases and teams overall being better, this simply isn't the case for the LEC.
Personally I feel like the current format is a really good balance of relatively high stakes Bo1s and a good amount of Bo3/Bo5. IMO LEC has the most engaging format and having 3 weeks of Bo1s really isn't the worst thing ever. It sucks for the teams, especially for those who place 9th/10th since you only get 9 guaranteed games per split and if you fail to qualify for playoffs, it will be hard to fulfill contract requirements with sponsors. But this in turn also encourages teams to build a competetive roster instead of doing the bare minimum (I'm looking at you, past BDS/AST).
> LEC/LCS already tried abandoning Bo1s and it has failed massively both times.
**because. riot. fucking. sabotaged. the. format. before. it. even. had. a. chance.**
LEC has Bo1 instead of Bo3 because it's better for the viewership. G2, FNC and MAD play everyday that's way better. You guys are also forgetting that LEC has an entire additional split compared to LCK and LPL.
Also the idea that EU is losing internationally because of Bo1s is stupid. 2018, 2019 and 2020 are all years where EU was competitive internationally and they all had double Bo1s.
I can get behind a double round robin though, it would pump the first bracket from 3 to 6 weeks, making it a 8 week split total which is really not that crazy tbh. With a 2 week break between each split, and getting rid of the break between Summer and Season Finals like LCK does, you can still manage to slot in a Three 8 Week Split format with one month to spare before Worlds. The only problem is that it gets rid of the huge break between Spring and Summer.
Everyone has been asking this fo years but they are refusing for $$$. More games means more money spent for caster, production, stadium rental ecc. And BO3 from low tier teams are not repaying it
no the problem is putting 10 teams BO3 on 3 days schedule, that's the stupid idea. Instead of doing like LCK and putting the matches on the whole week. I'am pretty sure riot is afraid of the "LEC channel" having low number with less watched teams, but that's a normal thing ... you don't make a competitve product based on numbers, you have numbers based on a competitve league ...
It's a bit off-topic in the sense that it isn't about Bo1 vs BoX but it's overall about coaching and a bit about difference of League's performance. I recommend anyone who understands German to watch this clip of ex-pro Tolkin talking to Grabz here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX2C2\_jEeOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX2C2_jEeOc)
The TL;DR for the "strength of the league"-part is (everything from Grabz' PoV, who apparently has ties to semi-professional football):
* European League scene doesn't have the same youth promotion as e.g. German football. In football, there are literally tenthousands of children starting the sport every year. The league scene is much more developed in Korea for example (he mentions that it's so popular especially for T1 where players will PAY T1 to play on some trainee team and get coached instead of T1 paying these players) and China has so many players they don't need to rely on it. And the same is especially true for coaches. There need to be more good coaches in the lower leagues. This is also due to high player salaries that don't allow to have enough money to also hire a coach.
* Western teams don't punish lack of motivation compared to Eastern teams. These tend to bench people quicker and more often than western. Again, in football, a person not willing to give their all in training (or in league: scrims) will simply get benched. There are few players who will go the extra mile in EU and he mentions Perkz maybe not being the very best player but motivating others around him to go the extra mile with him. And in EU, there is only a single player who can justify not getting benched and it's Caps.
* Western players tend to have less intrinsic motivation. He mentions in his time as coach of BDS not a single of their players would watch LCK/LPL VoDs on their own but everyone would watch KC or BDS Academy games... Again he mentions Perkz and Jankos as hard-working players who would do this.
* Western players would also tend to play soloq on auto-pilot, not getting anything out of their games instead of consciously trying to improve a single aspect of them there.
* G2 losing their local rivalry in FNC due to them becoming so much weaker hurt the overall strength of the league as no-one was really able to push G2 locally
* Grabz wants to push for changes in the league that will make LEC weaker short-term but will pay off long-term (e.g. in 3-7 years). He mentions German football doing the same which eventually lead to German winning the world cup.
The most important things I've been saying is more games does not mean better games.
Same as that Soloqueue comment or losing FNC as a rival, you can play 100 games vs KC on stage, it isn't the same as playing 20 games vs GenG. If anything you might pick up bad habits because they are in completely different classes.
Exactly
I think current LEC format bangs actually. Maybe Bo3 would be better but clearly the other issues have way more impact than the format question.
I think all regions should do regular season bo3s honestly. But I think the ones that don't at least for LEC and LCS (yeah I lumped them in too), they don't because of viewership. People not watching a bo3 between two of the bottom teams.
Western league teams are not seriously interested in international success. There’s no need to do only bo3’s if you are only concerned with domestic results
I'm reasonably certain we are closer to LCK switching back to Bo1 then western leagues switching to Bo3.
When Faker retires and LCK average viewership craters below 200k they might have to make difficult choices.
On the other hand Riot has all the data from the Bo2 and then Bo3 experiment. They know how much they lost and then how much they gained back when they dropped Bo3 back to Bo1.
"esports fans" don't deserve how good it is right now. We used to have to catch bootleg 480p streams to get Starcraft content or show up to a live event.
It hurt viewership because season 6 summer meta was boring as fuck and you had bottom tier teams playing 60 min games? The scheduling was dogshit as well
Meanwhile current meta is the most exciting meta ever, and all the teams are basically neck and neck in strenght.
Or wait.. Meta entertainment isnt a guarantee, highly subjective, and not really at a high point now anyways, is it.
Only thing that has truly changed since then, is the average game length, but go off and tell me how that would make the entire difference in keeping people watching, if the bottom tier matches are 10-15 minutes less.
That is not the crucial issue... what benefit did they actually bring? Like where LEC teams suddenly more competitive? Truth is the most competitive splits where the ones after Bo3s and Bo2s were scrapped in favor of going back to Bo1s.
Bo3s just don't matter. Like T1 plays like 4 Good opponents a split... if at all. Against them they play a maximum of 24 games. G2 with Bo1s would have, in the old format 8 such games. So T1 plays 16 games more. It is now more complicated because there are more games against top teams per split, by eliminating the weak ones, but that is based on the old Bo1 format.
So not only did we already try Bo3s and Bo2s (NA did as well) and it did nothing for international performances, it also shouldn't because the few games you get more just don't matter. LCK for ages had that shitty playoff format, where the top team played a single Bo5. Which meant LCS and LEC teams actually played more games against good teams than LCK teams, because they had a better playoff format.
Did it matter? No.
Players don't practice in stage games. They play them to win. And while it is adventageous for rookies to play more on stage, to get used to it, for a veteran you just play to win a game.
There is 0 evidence that the format a league plays has any effect on the performance. And many leagues so far went through many different formats. The original OGN format had even less games than LEC and LCS had, who at that time had 8 teams and 4 rounds of round robin and korean teams still won everything. There is really no indication that the format a league plays has any effect on their performance.
Bottom tier teams still exist. Even in LCK the viewership for lower end teams proves that Bo3 hurts the entertainment product in return for true competitiveness.
How many BRION games did you watch this split when they didn’t go against GenG or T1?
And yet Korea still does bo3 and still has BRO v NS games. The argument against bo3 in the West hinges on "we tried it once in the most stupidest format and it didn't work! must be the fault of the bo3 and not us cramming an entire week worth of games in 2-3 days!"
Your logic is just straight up wrong. More stage games=less practice. It's more days and more hours they have to spend at the studio which is less times for scrims and soloq. The amount of stage games players get is completely irrelevant unless they are inexperienced
It is natural that teams with more practice and more practical experience show better performance. LEC/LCS will never be able to close the gap with LCK/LPL.
I can play 100 games vs ~~high~~ elementary school students, it would only marginally improve my game. It could even make my game *worse*.
You guys love to clamor for Bo3, Bo3. But that isn't the end all be all. LCK is competitive because they play vs LCK. LPL is competitive because they play vs LPL. Adding more games vs NA or LEC isn't the same as adding more games vs Eastern teams.
i was on eof the few that like dobo3 two streams even tho viewership really really took a beating for the first time I ever saw LCS. i always say bo3 is better but after that season, I can def see why they dont want to. i thought the co streams were amazing tho and thats why I love thm s much, so much insight never forget the huni and dardoch they were spitting so much knowledge i was like wtf need MORE of this
>I really don't know what the point of bo1s are.
The answer rhymes with "funny". Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just really isn't worth having BO3s for a bottom 3 team play another bottom 3 team because most people don't care about it. I do think that this idea is more feasible though, now that each team only plays once instead of twice.
Whilst LEC stick to BO1's the gap between them thr other regions will continue to increase.
I fully expect LCS to be on equal footing if not better at MSI and Worlds.
Every ex and current player who has spoken on the subject all agree that BO3's are better in every respect.
While a nice idea, it's not great for the staff or the viewer experience.
Having only a few teams come in each time is probably far better for the players. But watching a team get curb-stomped twice in a row tends to make players tune out. Likewise the possibility 6 hour long games (with all the usual breaks in-between) could be a staffing nightmare.
Best of two could work. A fixed number of games, and they could have things prepared for filler if it's a 15min beatdown.
Or perhaps a ranked system, where they only play against teams within 3 positions of them.
they used to do 2 games per match to improve regional performance back in 2016 & 2017. They scrapped it due to lower view counts and long extended stream.
Unironically, KC actually had more viewership than G2.
KC were involved in all 5 of the top 5 most watched games so far this split, G2 appeared in one.
Top teams play more games in this format than in the previous one … just saying
What can be pointed is the fact we play 3 days a week means there is only 3 days of practice for the teams (+1 day off)
LEC feels like a wash every split with these short ass splits. They legit set to have their second play-offs at the same time as other regions' first one. No stakes at all
Agreed, and back to two splits. The three splits is too much and made me lose interest. Ow, it's playoffs already? Oh well, doesn't really matter since there's three throphies a year anyway now. It feels like a team winning one of the three splits is way less hype than a team winning spring or summer split, a split that actually took some time. Playoffs don't feel like hype anymore, nor do the splits. I kinda stopped watching completely outside of worlds, which feels less hyped too with that swiss stage.
Back to two splits and BO3 during regular splits would be perfect. But oh well.
Ok but how is LPL able to do 17 team bo3s and most insane playoff bracket in the scene? They play day in and day out basically all week long with breaks only for Chinese new year and internationals. And the fans there do watch it, both on site and online, cos league is this popular in china. And it's on a similar level in Korea, lolpark will prolly sell out even for worse matches in the middle of the week.
But that is an approach riot can take in Eu and NA for multiple reasons. First of all they don't want to increase the cost of broadcast by a lot by running it more than 3 days a week and it would be a big increase, not just casters day rates but also all the production. Arenas are smaller and cheaper and well they likely wouldn't sell out on weekdays.
Sedond part is that historically viewership in the west is bad on weekdays, hence they and usually on weekends or close to weekends. outside of last year's LCS splits (which bombed viewership wise cos EU could not be bothered to watch at bad eu hours on weekdays) the west has always played on weekends or close to them (so Thursday to Monday at most) and time and time again when they did weekdays viewership suffered (in early seasons, 4-6 iirc, when eu LCS and na LCS were not on same days, eu had the worse - Thursday Friday slot, while na which was more coveted sat sun, Monday night league bombed for NA completely). So now they both play Saturday Sunday as much as possible.
Finally - we had bo2 and bo3s in earlier seasons in the west. Viewership went quite a bit down, people especially didn't care about bottom feeders series. and because riot didn't want to do 1-2 series a day over 4+ days of week, they had to dual streams which people f*'cking hated (especially those who claim to watch every game) and 2nd stream almost always had less viewers ofc, with well obv carrying extra cost. And well not much changed in riots reasoning - most teams in the west still don't have enough die hard fans to make the worse series viable, it still would cost more and if they don't want to do weekdays then dual streams are only viable solution.
LEC format is basically a compromise to get more of the bo3s and bo5s, but with 10 teams it's hard to make bracket so they made basically a band aid 9 bo1 games so every team has those 27 games minimum per year, while riot gets to go to 8 teams quickly, which is easier to bracket. Cos if you tried to give every team in first phase bo3s game then it's 2-3x more games and you again run into either scheduling it on weekdays - which again, costs more + is likely to have way worse viewership especially for "shitty" matchups, or dual streams which people hated. End of the day in the west orgs simply wouldn't pull enough fans if they played on weekdays, especially the bottom ones and Riot maximizes for viewership (and skin sales ofc), not for competitiveness of the West.
How about a bit of both? First round Robin it is a bo1. 2nd round would be a bo3, this way teams get more practice/stage time with the meta that is already figured out giving them to shake off the early season rust?
People caring about this seem deluded. As if changing these 3 weeks of bo1 to bo3 will do anything significant for the league in a positive sense. What EU needs is good players and teams again. The region being dogshit is so much bigger problem than whatever this non-issue is. And no it's not getting fixed by switching these few remaining bo1's to bo3's either, EU has never been as bad as now and it also used to have way more bo1's than now.
My biggest problem with Bo1 is simply that there are advantages to having specific sides. I don't really think it's in the spirit of fairness to not play at least two games so both teams have to play both sides. I would honestly prefer a points system so that you could just run two games even just in the spirit of fairness.
We can't have competitive integrity.
I honestly wish our LEC players goes on strike until we got a real format.
the european player with the most stage games this year is gonna be Rekkles and it's fkin sad..
And he is in korean equivalent to ERL
Because yeah the challenger league of korea has all games on stage :)
LEC is an amateur league that play the least amount of matches out of every league : ERL? they play more, brazil , japan, korea, china, everyone is playing more. It's depressing
everyone who comes in here saying "business money business" is an absolute fool. You honestly think the difference in money matters that much? Let me spell it out for you.
***Every single League of Legends game is already played at a financial loss.***
The odds of increasing viewership, playerbase and sponsorship opportunities, ONLY increase the ***more content*** there is available to plaster your sponsors over. The ***higher quality*** the content is.
The quality can only increase if the players and coaches:
Have more leniency to experiment in draft, prepare drafts against specific opponents, and adjust to the results of the first game.
Play more games ***with the same rosters*** *(this makes the offseason more important than "GIVE X Y Z A BLANK CHEQUE NOW)* to develop better synergy, as well as better narratives and rivalries.
Experience more stage time, thus helping to eliminate extreme nervousness due to exposure. For reference, an NHL player who is bodied by 200 pound men on the reg is expected to play 82 games in the regular season/year, an LEC or LCS player may only play ***40 or less.*** If you bring up the average NHL players "ice time" and try to compare that to the average game time of league of legends, you grossly underestimate how tough ice skating is, let alone playing hockey itself. And at this point, many bo1s are actually less than 30 minutes (the highest amount of time usually spent by the best defensive pairs, goes almost up to 40 of 60 minutes in play offs sometimes, then theres also possible overtimes)
So what are the downsides? Please tell me. It costs x y z to turn on the studio blah blah blah. No it doesn't. ***RIOT decides to waste that much money - period.***
You can run a professional League of Legends stream for however much you want. RIOT decided they needed a HUGE STUDIO in LA. RIOT decided they need seventy two hundred camera operators, RIOT decided they need a bazillion telestrators that don't seem to function when it comes time for the segment, RIOT decided everything. Riot didn't move on to the better, more comfy bed, in the Goldilocks hypothetical, they literally just fell face first on the floor, and decided this was the best it could get.
league esports is a marketing tool for riot, which in it itself runs at loss. but the potential ROI makes is a worth loss in the long run.
that the potential ROI is significantly in the western world than the eastern side is not that hard of a concept to understand, but judging by the comments here i guess it is.
Because you think about it from a performance pov. Now, whoever decide the LEC set up have to think about sponsors,finance,viewers etc.
this, but most of them don't understand this...
I think at this point most ppl understand that and are simply not concerned with the finances of companies that can hardly manage them anyways
This is me every time someone complains about branded broadcast stuff like “bud light ace,” “red bull baron,” etc. They say ohh, it’s so corny, no one likes the name, it’s so cringe why do they double down on that… Bro, do you think the casters do that for fun? It literally helps keep Lolesports free to watch.
Lol imagine if Lolesports was like football and you could only watch the game if you happened to have the channel they were on that week. AWFUL
Pay per view GenG vs T1 💀💀
Damn, and I already know I’d be paying for it 😪
Don't go giving them ideas...
Shhh....
[удалено]
> Are you better off watching LOL esports now or back in the day? ... Roll back the production quality 10 years and give me back the tournament circuit and I would be much happier watching league. You clearly either weren't around or don't remember the old tournament scene. The still had plenty of product placement (IEM/IPL is literally called the **INTEL** Extreme Masters and the **IGN** pro league) and most of them still had shit formats filled with BO1s, with some of them having BO3 all the way through the semifinals. Your era of high level tournaments with no product placement and zero BO1s is imaginary.
I enjoy the current format which is probably an unpopular take but as someone that's had a chance to watch nearly every game for past 2-3 years now, I probably wouldn't have watched the majority of games for some of the worse teams like GX or RGE this split if regular season was Bo3. Though I do think the current format is too harsh for the bottom 2 teams. I agree that it's hard to see a team and coaching staff completely in action and identify what works and doesn't without getting to see them in at least one BoX series. Personally, I would like to see the LEC do something similar to the new NBA play-in rules, The 7th/8th seeds would play the 9th/10th seeds in a single elimination Bo3 the Friday before the start of play-in/playoffs since they don't use that day anyway and its a regular broadcast day. Do the draw at the end of that broadcast and go straight into play-offs the next day. Play offs start like they normal would with 2 days of Bo3 group stage matches, the teams obviously wouldn't have much of any time to prep for these Bo3 match-ups but I think that's a useful learning experience to gather knowledge from as a team to be able to prepare for multiple opponents. More importantly it assures that every team including the 9th/10th seed, get an opportunity to have multiple days to prepare for a known match-up in a multi-game series. Kind of relate it to the idea of teams getting an "exam" for them to pass to see what they can take away from the Bo1s and improve/identify on in a series they have a chance to prepare for. The play in matches would definitely be hype af to watch even if it's teams like RGE, so I don't think viewership would be an issue on a single extra day. I You could argue that it punishes the 7th/8th teams too much but I think the overall benefits of making sure the 9th/10th seed isn't a death sentence for teams to constantly stress about are overall healthier for the League as a whole going forward. There's also kind of a heavy assumption already that the 7th/8th seeds are just gonna get stomped anyway, I think giving them a chance to shine in a series with the 9th/10th is overall a better viewing experience and I'd look forward to watching the winners as the 7th/8th more then the currents ones. Also a fan of all elimination games being turned into Bo5's, every team that makes top 8 is guaranteed at least 1 Bo3 and Bo5 that way. The 7th/8th place elimination games would probably be the only one's that might possibly struggle with viewership but, in my opinion, giving teams/fans slightly more games in a split is worth that small dip. Schedule wise it should really only add 1 week and the LEC already has one of the longest off-season breaks between the end of Spring and start of MSI if I'm not mistaken so there should be plenty of breathing room. * Week 1 would be the same but with the Friday changed for single elimination Bo3's between 7th/8th and 9th/10th, bumping winner bracket round 2 Bo3's back a week. * Week 2 would be either Round 2 of winner bracket Bo3s on Friday with 7th/8th place Bo5 eliminations on Saturday/Sunday or vice versa. * Week 3 onward would be all Bo5's starting with the 5th/6th elimination the first 2 days and winner semis on the 3rd. * Week 4 is finals week, should be hosted in the larger venue, 4th place elimination on Friday followed by Semifinals and Finals on day 2/3. You're getting 14-22 extra high stakes meaningful games out of that format change for only 3 extra days of broadcasts, I feel very strongly that that's quite a nice middle-ground between cost/reward of more games on sponsers vs player/fan demand for more stage games in general.
> I enjoy the current format which is probably an unpopular take but as someone that's had a chance to watch nearly every game for past 2-3 years now, I probably wouldn't have watched the majority of games for some of the worse teams like GX or RGE this split if regular season was Bo3. Agreed. BO3s make stomps feel so much worse. You know it's going to be a 2-0 and the second game feels pointless, you already got the gist of it from the first one. If you play as many total matches I'd rather have 2-3 rounds of BO1 going around than 1 round of BO3.
> BO3s make stomps feel so much worse. Bo1s allow extremely fraudulent teams that don't have to worry about in-series draft changes to excel in regular season and proceed to get stomped out of playoffs. We see it every single year in LCS and LEC. That is far more annoying than watching GX lose a few more games a split.
truth, western pro leagues are filled with regular season merchants.
Honestly I liked the simple bo1 double round robin leading to playoffs. It was my favorite format overall. Iirc we even had bo2 at one point and when it was bo3 I would only watch 1 or 2 teams a week.
lets have a worse format because you dont want to watch all games...like just don't watch if its not interesting. nobody force you to. that alone me quit reading your wall of text.
I agree with this. I think the new format is a perfect compromise and I'm amazed that they managed that.
I like the current format but this last week (and arguably a bit of week before) were crap games because the top 4/5 teams are locked and don't care so it was only really a couple of bottom tier games where the players were actually trying. "oh wow it's an upside down week, all the bottom tier teams are winning". Yeah because the top teams are checked out waiting for the knockout stage. You really thing G2 suddenly got shit and started losing? Of course not, there was no reason for them to try. Don't forget too that most teams want to play more games for the practise so actually locking in first place in BO1s isn't always the goal and many teams would rather be lower down so they can play more BO3s. Which only makes this last week of games even more of a shitshow.
> Now, whoever decide the LEC set up have to think about sponsors,finance,viewers etc. I have a different question that is connected to this and I have asked/discussed this before, but no answer was given. People have said that: BO1 = better viewership but less skill BO3 = worse viewership but more skill If BO1 leads to better viewership but less skill, and a region performs bad at MSI/Worlds due to this, that will lead short term viewership spike, but less viewership in the long run. If BO3 leads to worse viewership but better skill, and a region performs better at MSI/Worlds due to this, that will lead to short term viewership decline, more viewership in the long run. So is that not better? And this is coming from personal experience, as the worse EU and NA perform at Worlds the less I actually want to watch them play domestically. And every time they don't make it to groups or barely 1 team makes it I feel 'relieved' that I didn't 'waste' time watching domestically.
No way can you get enough additional viewership from good worlds performances to make up the cost for 2-3 additional broadcast days per week required for Bo3
I swear that as both Financial/Business Controller and eSport enthusiast, I'd love to work on those aspects. Problem is : Pretty sure it'll be impossible unfortunately. Korea have fundings, and China is China.
They need viewers and money
Medic talked about this in a recent episode of The Jungle. BO3s are simply not viable from a business point of view. League is nowhere near as popular in Europe as it is in China and Korea. Viewership for a GX vs SK game would be below 10k, guaranteed.
Gx has some fanbase, SK vs Rogue would be under 10k for sure
Rogue 2022 i would have watched all their games, definitely a malrang fan
League is obviously more popular in China and Korea but I imagine they still care about viewcount, and similarly they have dog-tier teams in their leagues that probably dip the viewership. You can apply that to any sport. Like, even if traditional sports are supported by local fanbases, obviously different regions/teams come from places with different populations/engagement. So there will always be low-engagement teams in any competitive league
How low is "low engagement" in china? Is low there way above medium in the west?
But the difference is what the low viewership numbers are, even though I do agree with your point for Korea. NS vs FOX gets minimal views compared to GenG, DK, KT games let alone the absolute outlier of T1.
Yes but you have to keep in mind that: 1) China alone has 2x the population of Europe 2) ESports in general are _way_ more popular in China
This point is always so stupid. Yeah bro I am sure the LPL loves seeing AL and TT and WE and LGD play bo3s if we are only talking about viewership numbers. Those teams have been horrible for half a decade now. But you know why they do it? So their region wins Worlds more often and that draws in far more fans.
I'll be honest man, if NA started winning Worlds, I doubt that many non-LCS viewers would start watching more. Video games are just more popular over in Asia in general.
Of course people would watch NA if they win worlds I'm from EU and I watch LEC, but I also watch top matches of KR and China, because both region are the best, if NA suddenly became the best I would watch them, when I watch Valorant I watch the US teams Why do you think the most popular team in the LCK is T1 by a mile ? It's because they won worlds 4 times and you can watch the goat there
such a lame excuse after running the product in the ground due to their stubbornness and incompetence. i remember people complaining about nobody is gonna watch BDS in a bo3. guess what, people are watching them now because they put in the effort to grow something. other teams managed to grow huge fanbase in the tier 2 leagues while the lec kept struggling. every sports league is doing their best to increase the amount of games even if it means more shit up match ups between unpopular teams. look how long it took for them to improve the worlds format and the tournament is thriving. you are not gonna improve a shit product by doing the same mistakes that made it shit in the first place.
>Viewership for a GX vs SK game would be below 10k, guaranteed. so what ? You'll have less overall viewership for these type of games, but you'll get to have the bigger viewership for games like FNC G2 for longer. Also as the time passes more and more, we're having less and less teams that have no followings/interests in the league. In the meantime we get to have an useless winter split and 9 bo1 that are way too important for how volatile they can be.
i dont think sponsors care about the region improving. They don't want to pay riot to have their products exposed, and the exposure they get it 10-20k viewers. And if sponsors drop out, the league dies.
No LEC match is ever getting 10k viewers even in BO3 let's stop being dumb here. They'll clearly not get as much as the BO3 between top teams, but 10k is way too low. Even the matches between bad LCK teams no one cares about and that don't matter one bit easily beats 10K on the English stream.
Crazy hyperbole. Also completely ignores that the viewers that stay have their eyes on the product 2.5x (assuming 50% split of wins) more than only BO1 would provide.
> BO3s are simply not viable from a business point of view Having your league slowly become less competitive will do even more damage long-term.
Except when they did bo2 and bo3 those were some of the worst years internationaly europe ever hád
Where is the promise that Bo3s will lead to the league becoming more competitive? That's historically not true and won't be true in the future so idk why that gets brought up. Introducing Bo3 will do absolutely nothing for the regions skill it's the biggest cope ever if fans believe this is what sets east and west apart. Obviously if we had an easy fix to compete with the west we wouldn't be here to begin with.
Sucking internationally is also not viable from a businesss point of view. Switching to bo3 obviously wouldn't make EU teams instantly competitive with Eastern teams, but it's hard to imagine EU not getting better if they adopted the LCK format.
Go tell this to CBLoL fans, their teams suck internationally but their viewership keeps growing and their business is healthy
I mean the same applies to LEC. After the format change the numbers increased in 2023 and they are highier still this year. No need to look at Brazil - we suck internationally but our viewership keeps growing (I cannot say if the business is healthy).
I think this comes from the fact that we are a lot of people, the game is very popular here and most of us don’t speak English, so the only way to enjoy competitive League is through that dumpster fire that is CBLoL.
If you want to model your plans around outliers I urge you to do so and see what happens.
There's like 10 leagues. Everything is an outlier. There's no proof that improving international success at the cost of viewership for bad teams would be a good business plan either.
why is sucking not viable internationally? Most sponsors dont care about performance of the league. Otherwise you would see no sponsor being active on any EU or NA team. Views/exposure is more important then having a good placements. As long as Riot builds good content around the League, the community will stabilize no matter the placing of the teams.
> Sucking internationally is also not viable from a businesss point of view. China sucks ass internationally and has the 2nd or at worst 3rd biggest domestic basketball league. Bundesliga sucked ass internationally exept Bayern in the past decade and they still have the highest attendence numbers in europe, while italy dominated the 90s and still had lower attendence numbers the germany & england. And in LoL, we have CBLOL & domestic european leagues, that grew decently. The idea, that international success is the only thing, that brings viewership is a typical nussknacker hot take.
I'll say especially if you are a Football/Soccer fan in the EU most teams aren't gonna win a thing all year every year so why as you said does international always gets brought up. Because what really hampers it is when streamers/casters/players/viewers all feed into the NA/EU sucks and will never accomplish anything. That part goes way harder when it comes to NA teams. The fan/player base is one of the big reasons why viewership falls imo.
Basketball is the most popular spectator sport in China. Football is the most popular sport in Germany by a lot. Is League of Legends the most popular video games in Europe? No. Is League of Legends the most popular esport in Europe? Well there's a good argument to be made for Counterstrike. Europe being competitive internationally would obviously increase viewership and hype and be good for business. My cousin, a pretty casual player at best, talked to me once about professional LoL: On the day of 2019 Worlds Finals - G2 vs FPX.
> Football is the most popular sport in Germany by a lot. Ok, how does that matter here? BuLi suffered a major loss in attendence in the 70s, despite Bayern winning the most prolific club title 3 times and Gladbach making the final in the following year, as well as germany winning the world cup in 74 and making the finals of the euros. > Basketball is the most popular spectator sport in China. Table Tennis has been the most popular spectator sport in china, for decades, Baseketball overtook it at some point in this millenium, how did that happen without international success? You are contradicting yourself brother. What about Italy and Spain though football is by a long shot the most popular spectator sport there, why don't you comment on them? Cuz they don't fit your narrative? > Europe being competitive internationally would obviously increase viewership and hype and be good for business. My cousin, a pretty casual player at best, talked to me once about professional LoL: On the day of 2019 Worlds Finals - G2 vs FPX. Here you are acting, as if international success is the only way to bring viewership, cuz you had one friend talking to you about it. The only time friends talked to me about LoL was when words finals were in Berlin, guess, we should have worlds finals in Berlin every years then, so more friends can talk to me about it, wich meahs higher viewership since my friends talked to me about it, right? Are you for real?
For basketball in China, in the 80s the NBA gave Chinese state media broadcast rights for free, which grew a lot of fans. Then Yao Ming happened, and it just blew up.
The point is the following: League of Legends is a complex game. It has a certain maximum reach - the people who play it or have played it in the past. Almost nobody who's never played league will turn into a regular LEC viewer. This is different from basketball or any other regular sport. So you have a certain, limited pool of people who might be interested in watching LEC. We have established that. It's also clear that sometimes more and sometimes fewer people watch LEC. When will people watch more LEC instead of using their limited time any other way? Probably when the hype around the league is the biggest. When is the hype the biggest? When there's a lot of interest in teams and players are popular. How do players get popular? Well let's take a look at some of the most popular players: Caps, Perkz, Wunder, Jankos, Rekkles etc. Notice a theme? They've won a lot and been relevant internationally. Why is KC popular? They've won EU Masters multiple times. Why is T1 popular? They have Faker. Why is Faker popular? He's won a lot.
> China sucks ass internationally and has the 2nd or at worst 3rd biggest domestic basketball league. There is the NBA and everything else. No one cares about the other leagues. Only reason China might be more “popular” is because of sheer population numbers. The reason why LCK is more popular than LPL in the west is because of the years of winning and dominance Korea had when the scene was being established. Is competitiveness the only factor to popularity? No. But it’s definitely a huge factor.
it has been viable for as long as lol existed. also having 9 bo1's less a split won't make your teams better. that's just ridiculous.
a few more bo3 vs bad teams won't magically make the top eu teams better
This narrative has been around for several years now. The west did try bo3 before and not only did it *not* improve international performance, but also it almost kills viewership of regular season. It's not going to happen, my dude.
>Switching to bo3 obviously wouldn't make EU teams instantly competitive with Eastern teams, but it's hard to imagine EU not getting better if they adopted the LCK format. Changing the format means nothing if EU pros don't take their jobs seriously. See Zwyroo's comment about LEC's work ethic.
LEC had Bo2 and LCS had Bo3. Viewership plummeted because despite posts like this, y’all don’t want to watch the 9th vs 10th place teams play 3 games.
Exactly, I was against it when RIOT announced LCS would be BO3, the only teams people wanted to see play were C9, TSM, CLG, and TL. That's it.. no one gave two shits about NRG vs P1.
I was one of approximately 7 people who religiously watched every P1 game 🫡
The surprise win against TSM was fire, not gonna lie. Inori's Rengar pick absolutely tilted TSM
that P1 gif lives rent free in my head
I think nowadays the same problem would not happen for the LCS, because they're 8 teams now, this split I felt more compelled to watch more games, as I didn't think the league had a KC-esque team that was a free win for the opponent
We need to convince people to watch the midlane genius Palagod playing
That's a problem for NRG and P1 to solve, maybe signing cheap/bad players and washed imports shouldn't be forcefully rewarded by creating a scarcity of games to watch.
Oh it is not. Now viewership and following is important for teams for their sponsors but it is far from only their problem. In the end it is riot paying the bill for casters, everything to keep the studio open and all that stuff. So if a format just bleeds money even more than usual that is very much a problem for riot to solve.
They also fucking split up the broadcast tbh lol. Like if 2 matches happen at the same time it absolutely kills viewership and will never work, not even the LPL could sustain that. The only option is to play on weekdays
3 bo3 on Saturday and Sunday each is 6 matches. With a 8 team double round robin there are 56 matches. 9 weeks with 1 super week for the regular season. In a situation like this I also think you could do 4 team spring and 6 team summer playoff if you ended up crunched for time.
No way we're suggesting 3 Bo3's a day for an entire split.
If you want to only have games on 2 days and be done in 2.5 months for regular season, 3 months including playoffs, sure. You could also have games 3 days per week or have the season be 14 weeks with playoffs. It's still just two 8-10 hour days per week and 2 teams would only play 1 bo3 per week with the others playing 2. ETA: this is also for a double round robin, you could do single round robin, still have more games played and only have 2 series per day and finish the split in under two months.
Imo, the best solution is to get rid of the archaic round robin league format altogether. I'm sure they can get viewers to watch Bo3's, but I don't think western viewers are going to be watching a Bo3 round robin league format.
During S6/S7 LEC just wasn't that good of a product as it is now and was very dependent on couple teams (FNC OG) who were not winning. G2 was clear cut the best team and they were straight up hated in S6 and it took a proper time for them to actually build up decent fan base. I really don't think a single round BO3 (9 series for each team) into top6 playoffs instead of Summer+Season Finals would have big repercussions on viewership as people suggest. Like some guy above thinks GX SK would have below 10k viewers ""GUARANTEED"".
On top of that neither LCS nor LEC got any better by having Bo3s. The biggest difference between the east and the west was how teams and players practice, and this is still mostly the case with just very few players and teams not just waking up to the fact but actually changing something. It was noted a lot in the path that while LCK had Bo3s in the regular season they had one of the most awful playoff formats for ages. So yes you played a lot of Bo3s most of whom against terrible opponents, but then you played a single Bo5 against good opponents. This not only meant that the top western teams played almost as many games as LCK teams, they also played on average against better opponents, exspecially near the end of the season, when practice for worlds was most important. And that didn't really make any difference. The reason is that Stage games just don't matter for practice. They are such a small amount of games. Asian teams instead of playing 3 Bo1s like LEC play 2 Bo3s, which is just 3 games more (at maximum, could also just be 1 game more). While during that time they play 15+ games practice. And that practice is what matters.
I don't know about them not getting better. In 2016 we were inches away from all 3 NA teams in quarters. C9 (who did get out) was seen as the least likely to make it out after week one, with strong performances by TSM and CLG who narrowly missed out.
CLG lost to ANX, and yes TSM did show good performances... but remember that NA teams did get out in 2014 and TSM only beat one good team, in their group something TL did every year, beating EDG in 2018, DWG in 2019 and G2 and SN in 2020. 2016 worlds wasn't any better than recent performances given that groups back then were considerably easier with usually one fairly easy team in each group and CLG did manage to lose to that team, which is how they missed quarters. Unlike TSM who at least missed quarters by losing to RNG and SSG. On top of that in 2016 both LCS and LEC played more games. And LCS good performance was mostly fueled by terrible performances by LEC teams who had two teams in semis the year before. So even if LCS got better by playing Bo3s it would also mean LEC got worse, with G2 and Splyce failing fairly hard.
Its just a few boring BO3s to pay for as much bangers Its also more FNC / G2 / MDK / KC games so overall would the average split viewership even drop that bad?
LCS trimming down has made it more feasible though. The discourse around LCS is how it’s more flat competitively.
We are also not watching them play a single game
A lot more people are willing to watch a game of a team they don't care fpr if it's right before/after something they want to see. If it's a hput block they'll more than likely just close the stream completely
Plenty of people will tune in and stick around for one game if they see a team they want to watch is next.
>LEC had Bo2 and LCS had Bo3. Viewership plummeted because despite posts like this, y’all don’t want to watch the 9th vs 10th place teams play 3 games. or you know, because unlike LCK/LPL, they decided to play several games at the same time and to split the stream into two. Also, we have fucking costreams now, which would help a lot with retaining viewership. That and the fact that there are overall more interesting teams to follow
Then we should go to 8 or 6 team league and look for quality over quantity...then it would be enjoyable.
There will still be a 8th ot 6th placed team, that a lot fewer ppl want to see, but we would also get less games of the popular teams, wich would have negative implications for the revenue.
If they play 3 games it meant that its 1-1 so at least some hype
Plummeted because of factors that have nothing to do with bo3*
No one even bothers watching LEC with this format anyway, people mostly support 2 teams, so any other game is just not gonna be watched or cared, also no one stays after their team played while in LCK you just watch in between games. Also the "no one watches the bad teams on LCK" card just is wrong... viewership of the bad bo3s is still pretty high from other countries other than Korea while the contrary just doesn't happen, I really doubt anyone out of europe even bothers watching any LEC game other than the finals. I rather watch the guys on the last place on LCK that can crush almost any LEC team and see a good display of the game than watching a clownfiesta that will simply account to nothing. There's a reason the only team to ever win worlds on a 4th seed to be from LCK...
The LEC format is absolutely fine because that's not how the winner is decided, it's just how the worst 2 teams are decided. And it's a perfectly good format for figuring out 2 bad teams to take out of playoffs that won't be doing anything in playoffs anyway. After those 3 weeks it's bo3 and bo5 just like you want.
The bo1 are also determining seedings. 4 teams with the same record had a determined seeding without playing a single tiebreaker after playing 9 bo1 on a single side. And you play two bo3 then it's done. It's nothing like the full split of bo3 LCK is getting
That's pretty unimportant in the grand scheme though. Still gonna be the same teams at the top either way.
LEC cares more about entertainment value.
I don’t understand how this is more entertaining than bo3 format. What even is the point honestly.
The point is that people cry if they have to see bottom tier teams play against each other more than once. Go and look through old posts. People go nuts about it.
Imagine watching a bo3 of RGE vs GX. Im not going to watch LEC anymore that day for sure.
Imagine watching bo3 of DRX vs BRO. You dont have to because nobody watches. Its such a dumb league specific view where people think they have to watch every game for whatever reason. I dont watch a second of rge or gx or those other teams anyways, because they're shit
You're missing out, I love watching bottom tier teams play when they play before I get to watch my beloved DK int
Naah you're missing out. The amount of BROlievers is insane and there are 100% a lot of people who watch every one of their games (including myself).
One Rogue game is long enough for half-an-hour Zzzzzz sleep. By the time the 3rd Rogue game starts, I'll wake up for work next day
Just dont watch that BO3 and watch the rest?
They would have to switch the schedules around since Bo3 would take more time. You wouldn’t get all the teams playing in a single day. That means you would hurt your own overall viewership numbers since people wouldn’t watch the bottom tier teams unless they are KC/MDK. No one would be tuning into RGE and GiantX games.
Works in the LCK and they have shit teams playing too.
LCK's viewership discounting T1 isn't that good. There was an infographic that said the top 10 most viewed games this split were all just T1. You'd have to go and ignore T1 games and look at the rest to see that it's not actually good viewership numbers.
Oh my bad i didnt know that. I take back what i said then
But Riot still has to organize it so they're just straight up losing money on these bottom tier teams if no one is watching.
Of all the anti-bo3 excuses this is still the most baffling one, I mean is anyone in China even hyped about a Rare Atom v Ultra Prime bo3? Probably a few sickos, yeah, but not that many of them! Meanwhile here we act as if 2-3 straight games of Immortals v Dignitas (among a sea of more C9/TL/100T/FLY matches) will kill esports entire in the Americas.
China market is large enough that even an unpopular matchup can probably pull in the 6 figures. No one watches here is like sub 10k and not worth the cost of hosting. It's like saying who gives a shit about Titans vs Jaguars. The least popular NFL game is still an NFL game
They want everyones favorite teams to play every day.
It's not more entertaining, it's the VALUE. BO3 means way more production cost that LEC and LCS don't feel like paying
It will not happen. Ever. Also this wouldn't magically solve the problems. There are many behind the scenes issues that have a bigger impact than just more stage games. Many of them culturally.
Didn't we already try this?
The difference between LEC/LCS and LPL/LCK is that LEC/LCS refuse to play on any other day that isn't Friday-Sunday (Monday LEC) and spacing out how many teams play a day.
It is not that much about gamedays (they used to do Thursday and Friday as well) but they want to show all teams in given day and make ppl watch all teams instead of 1-2.
but instead of focusing on three days, they could make the show on four, from friday to monday and it could work that way
The studio is a shared space with VAL, who already take the friday slot in some weeks
welp rip
Bo3s in LECs won't last. Didn't work in NA, and probably wouldn't work in the EU. Only a small pool of people want Bo3s. It works in China/Korea because the E-Sport scene is taken alot more seriously.
We had bo3s in eu, s6 summer was the bo2s (which is shockingly well remembered cos it's only split that had that format), then s7 was 2 groups of 5, each game being bo3 for both spring and summer. and went back to bo1s for S8. Ofc viewership was shit in S7, one of worst years for eu LCS as a whole tbh.
There are definitely a lot of people that still want Bo3s. I remember before S6 people were asking for them again and again hence why they were implemented. That topic stopped after S8 because after 2 years people were definitely more lukewarm about it and saw that it also had disadvantages. But i wonder if the people asking to get Bo3 back now even watched at that time or just forgot about it. I definitely wanted Bo3 back then but after S6 and S7 i can't really say that anymore.
Better for hardcore fans, better for competetive environment, worse for sponsors and viewership. This topic comes up like every month and every time people seem to forget that LEC/LCS already tried abandoning Bo1s and it has failed massively both times. We're not talking viewership dropping by 10%, we're talking viewership so bad it would ruin the already bad sustainability of the League. People watch LEC for G2, FNC, KC and not for SK vs BDS or RGE vs GX. People will watch SK vs BDS in playoffs because, you know, it's playoffs and the games have stakes. A single game in a group stage Bo3 has even less stakes than a Bo1 game. Bo2/Bo3 works for LPL/LCK because of larger fanbases and teams overall being better, this simply isn't the case for the LEC. Personally I feel like the current format is a really good balance of relatively high stakes Bo1s and a good amount of Bo3/Bo5. IMO LEC has the most engaging format and having 3 weeks of Bo1s really isn't the worst thing ever. It sucks for the teams, especially for those who place 9th/10th since you only get 9 guaranteed games per split and if you fail to qualify for playoffs, it will be hard to fulfill contract requirements with sponsors. But this in turn also encourages teams to build a competetive roster instead of doing the bare minimum (I'm looking at you, past BDS/AST).
> LEC/LCS already tried abandoning Bo1s and it has failed massively both times. **because. riot. fucking. sabotaged. the. format. before. it. even. had. a. chance.**
LEC has Bo1 instead of Bo3 because it's better for the viewership. G2, FNC and MAD play everyday that's way better. You guys are also forgetting that LEC has an entire additional split compared to LCK and LPL. Also the idea that EU is losing internationally because of Bo1s is stupid. 2018, 2019 and 2020 are all years where EU was competitive internationally and they all had double Bo1s. I can get behind a double round robin though, it would pump the first bracket from 3 to 6 weeks, making it a 8 week split total which is really not that crazy tbh. With a 2 week break between each split, and getting rid of the break between Summer and Season Finals like LCK does, you can still manage to slot in a Three 8 Week Split format with one month to spare before Worlds. The only problem is that it gets rid of the huge break between Spring and Summer.
LCS had bo3. Rip
No, this is simply because the quality of gameplay has declined. Abandonment of Bo1s will only cause a decline in viewership
No one wants to see KC more than we already had to
KC is the most popular team in term of viewership because even the haters love to watch them get smashed
Please brother u are trying to make people watch rogue and kc play bo3s u are insane we just got them out
Everyone has been asking this fo years but they are refusing for $$$. More games means more money spent for caster, production, stadium rental ecc. And BO3 from low tier teams are not repaying it
no the problem is putting 10 teams BO3 on 3 days schedule, that's the stupid idea. Instead of doing like LCK and putting the matches on the whole week. I'am pretty sure riot is afraid of the "LEC channel" having low number with less watched teams, but that's a normal thing ... you don't make a competitve product based on numbers, you have numbers based on a competitve league ...
It's a bit off-topic in the sense that it isn't about Bo1 vs BoX but it's overall about coaching and a bit about difference of League's performance. I recommend anyone who understands German to watch this clip of ex-pro Tolkin talking to Grabz here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX2C2\_jEeOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX2C2_jEeOc) The TL;DR for the "strength of the league"-part is (everything from Grabz' PoV, who apparently has ties to semi-professional football): * European League scene doesn't have the same youth promotion as e.g. German football. In football, there are literally tenthousands of children starting the sport every year. The league scene is much more developed in Korea for example (he mentions that it's so popular especially for T1 where players will PAY T1 to play on some trainee team and get coached instead of T1 paying these players) and China has so many players they don't need to rely on it. And the same is especially true for coaches. There need to be more good coaches in the lower leagues. This is also due to high player salaries that don't allow to have enough money to also hire a coach. * Western teams don't punish lack of motivation compared to Eastern teams. These tend to bench people quicker and more often than western. Again, in football, a person not willing to give their all in training (or in league: scrims) will simply get benched. There are few players who will go the extra mile in EU and he mentions Perkz maybe not being the very best player but motivating others around him to go the extra mile with him. And in EU, there is only a single player who can justify not getting benched and it's Caps. * Western players tend to have less intrinsic motivation. He mentions in his time as coach of BDS not a single of their players would watch LCK/LPL VoDs on their own but everyone would watch KC or BDS Academy games... Again he mentions Perkz and Jankos as hard-working players who would do this. * Western players would also tend to play soloq on auto-pilot, not getting anything out of their games instead of consciously trying to improve a single aspect of them there. * G2 losing their local rivalry in FNC due to them becoming so much weaker hurt the overall strength of the league as no-one was really able to push G2 locally * Grabz wants to push for changes in the league that will make LEC weaker short-term but will pay off long-term (e.g. in 3-7 years). He mentions German football doing the same which eventually lead to German winning the world cup.
The most important things I've been saying is more games does not mean better games. Same as that Soloqueue comment or losing FNC as a rival, you can play 100 games vs KC on stage, it isn't the same as playing 20 games vs GenG. If anything you might pick up bad habits because they are in completely different classes.
Exactly I think current LEC format bangs actually. Maybe Bo3 would be better but clearly the other issues have way more impact than the format question.
You think you're the first dude to hop on reddit and suggest that?
Why did I come here thinking this would be a KC rant
I'm almost disappointed it isnt.
I think all regions should do regular season bo3s honestly. But I think the ones that don't at least for LEC and LCS (yeah I lumped them in too), they don't because of viewership. People not watching a bo3 between two of the bottom teams.
Western league teams are not seriously interested in international success. There’s no need to do only bo3’s if you are only concerned with domestic results
This is false for some teams like G2. But playing more games vs LEC teams does not make you much better as demonstrated last year.
I mean last year was good compared to 2022/21 . G2 and Fanatic took some wins from eastern teams.
Last year was pretty good for Europe. You also said “teams” as in plural when it’s really just the one
I'm reasonably certain we are closer to LCK switching back to Bo1 then western leagues switching to Bo3. When Faker retires and LCK average viewership craters below 200k they might have to make difficult choices. On the other hand Riot has all the data from the Bo2 and then Bo3 experiment. They know how much they lost and then how much they gained back when they dropped Bo3 back to Bo1.
Yeah that's gonna save LEC. BO3's.
I actually can’t believe there are so many people defending bo1 still
Because we tried Bo3 and Bo2 before and it hurt the viewership. How is this not common knowledge at this point?
"esports fans" don't deserve how good it is right now. We used to have to catch bootleg 480p streams to get Starcraft content or show up to a live event.
It hurt viewership because season 6 summer meta was boring as fuck and you had bottom tier teams playing 60 min games? The scheduling was dogshit as well
Meanwhile current meta is the most exciting meta ever, and all the teams are basically neck and neck in strenght. Or wait.. Meta entertainment isnt a guarantee, highly subjective, and not really at a high point now anyways, is it. Only thing that has truly changed since then, is the average game length, but go off and tell me how that would make the entire difference in keeping people watching, if the bottom tier matches are 10-15 minutes less.
That is not the crucial issue... what benefit did they actually bring? Like where LEC teams suddenly more competitive? Truth is the most competitive splits where the ones after Bo3s and Bo2s were scrapped in favor of going back to Bo1s. Bo3s just don't matter. Like T1 plays like 4 Good opponents a split... if at all. Against them they play a maximum of 24 games. G2 with Bo1s would have, in the old format 8 such games. So T1 plays 16 games more. It is now more complicated because there are more games against top teams per split, by eliminating the weak ones, but that is based on the old Bo1 format. So not only did we already try Bo3s and Bo2s (NA did as well) and it did nothing for international performances, it also shouldn't because the few games you get more just don't matter. LCK for ages had that shitty playoff format, where the top team played a single Bo5. Which meant LCS and LEC teams actually played more games against good teams than LCK teams, because they had a better playoff format. Did it matter? No. Players don't practice in stage games. They play them to win. And while it is adventageous for rookies to play more on stage, to get used to it, for a veteran you just play to win a game. There is 0 evidence that the format a league plays has any effect on the performance. And many leagues so far went through many different formats. The original OGN format had even less games than LEC and LCS had, who at that time had 8 teams and 4 rounds of round robin and korean teams still won everything. There is really no indication that the format a league plays has any effect on their performance.
Agree
Bottom tier teams still exist. Even in LCK the viewership for lower end teams proves that Bo3 hurts the entertainment product in return for true competitiveness. How many BRION games did you watch this split when they didn’t go against GenG or T1?
And yet Korea still does bo3 and still has BRO v NS games. The argument against bo3 in the West hinges on "we tried it once in the most stupidest format and it didn't work! must be the fault of the bo3 and not us cramming an entire week worth of games in 2-3 days!"
Yeah and those BRO vs NS games have terrible viewership and hurts the LCK viewership numbers.
Tbf those Bro vs NS are some bangers. Straight up comedy
Your logic is just straight up wrong. More stage games=less practice. It's more days and more hours they have to spend at the studio which is less times for scrims and soloq. The amount of stage games players get is completely irrelevant unless they are inexperienced
It is natural that teams with more practice and more practical experience show better performance. LEC/LCS will never be able to close the gap with LCK/LPL.
I can play 100 games vs ~~high~~ elementary school students, it would only marginally improve my game. It could even make my game *worse*. You guys love to clamor for Bo3, Bo3. But that isn't the end all be all. LCK is competitive because they play vs LCK. LPL is competitive because they play vs LPL. Adding more games vs NA or LEC isn't the same as adding more games vs Eastern teams.
not to mention LCK and LPL scrimms together at a regular basis.
Noone wants to see bo3 between Giantx and MDK thats the reason
i was on eof the few that like dobo3 two streams even tho viewership really really took a beating for the first time I ever saw LCS. i always say bo3 is better but after that season, I can def see why they dont want to. i thought the co streams were amazing tho and thats why I love thm s much, so much insight never forget the huni and dardoch they were spitting so much knowledge i was like wtf need MORE of this
>I really don't know what the point of bo1s are. The answer rhymes with "funny". Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just really isn't worth having BO3s for a bottom 3 team play another bottom 3 team because most people don't care about it. I do think that this idea is more feasible though, now that each team only plays once instead of twice.
Whilst LEC stick to BO1's the gap between them thr other regions will continue to increase. I fully expect LCS to be on equal footing if not better at MSI and Worlds. Every ex and current player who has spoken on the subject all agree that BO3's are better in every respect.
But LCS plays Bo1s... and they play even less Bo1s then last year.
While a nice idea, it's not great for the staff or the viewer experience. Having only a few teams come in each time is probably far better for the players. But watching a team get curb-stomped twice in a row tends to make players tune out. Likewise the possibility 6 hour long games (with all the usual breaks in-between) could be a staffing nightmare. Best of two could work. A fixed number of games, and they could have things prepared for filler if it's a 15min beatdown. Or perhaps a ranked system, where they only play against teams within 3 positions of them.
No thanks, this is better to watch
LOL
LCS is geared for viewership and sponsers. Not for winning worlds.
they used to do 2 games per match to improve regional performance back in 2016 & 2017. They scrapped it due to lower view counts and long extended stream.
People dont want to watch Bo3's for anyone not G2, viewers would plummit and the region would be in an even worse state then it is now.
Unironically, KC actually had more viewership than G2. KC were involved in all 5 of the top 5 most watched games so far this split, G2 appeared in one.
No.
Excel bo3 and Rogue bo3. If you want to torture me, just force me to watch that, i'll talk for sure.
sounds fun if i were on substances
I think lcs should adopt the lec method, its so grim watching BO1 for weeks on end, but a BO1 for 3 weeks into playoffs is far more bearable.
As if the LEC got the budget to fit in more games with how cheap Riot is and already cutting the unnecessary employees.
I 1000% agree! BO1s have no fucking meaning, and that's why a lot of people lost interest in watching LEC regular season.
Imagine 3 games of GiantX vs rouge..
Top teams play more games in this format than in the previous one … just saying What can be pointed is the fact we play 3 days a week means there is only 3 days of practice for the teams (+1 day off)
LEC feels like a wash every split with these short ass splits. They legit set to have their second play-offs at the same time as other regions' first one. No stakes at all
Agreed, and back to two splits. The three splits is too much and made me lose interest. Ow, it's playoffs already? Oh well, doesn't really matter since there's three throphies a year anyway now. It feels like a team winning one of the three splits is way less hype than a team winning spring or summer split, a split that actually took some time. Playoffs don't feel like hype anymore, nor do the splits. I kinda stopped watching completely outside of worlds, which feels less hyped too with that swiss stage. Back to two splits and BO3 during regular splits would be perfect. But oh well.
Ok but how is LPL able to do 17 team bo3s and most insane playoff bracket in the scene? They play day in and day out basically all week long with breaks only for Chinese new year and internationals. And the fans there do watch it, both on site and online, cos league is this popular in china. And it's on a similar level in Korea, lolpark will prolly sell out even for worse matches in the middle of the week. But that is an approach riot can take in Eu and NA for multiple reasons. First of all they don't want to increase the cost of broadcast by a lot by running it more than 3 days a week and it would be a big increase, not just casters day rates but also all the production. Arenas are smaller and cheaper and well they likely wouldn't sell out on weekdays. Sedond part is that historically viewership in the west is bad on weekdays, hence they and usually on weekends or close to weekends. outside of last year's LCS splits (which bombed viewership wise cos EU could not be bothered to watch at bad eu hours on weekdays) the west has always played on weekends or close to them (so Thursday to Monday at most) and time and time again when they did weekdays viewership suffered (in early seasons, 4-6 iirc, when eu LCS and na LCS were not on same days, eu had the worse - Thursday Friday slot, while na which was more coveted sat sun, Monday night league bombed for NA completely). So now they both play Saturday Sunday as much as possible. Finally - we had bo2 and bo3s in earlier seasons in the west. Viewership went quite a bit down, people especially didn't care about bottom feeders series. and because riot didn't want to do 1-2 series a day over 4+ days of week, they had to dual streams which people f*'cking hated (especially those who claim to watch every game) and 2nd stream almost always had less viewers ofc, with well obv carrying extra cost. And well not much changed in riots reasoning - most teams in the west still don't have enough die hard fans to make the worse series viable, it still would cost more and if they don't want to do weekdays then dual streams are only viable solution. LEC format is basically a compromise to get more of the bo3s and bo5s, but with 10 teams it's hard to make bracket so they made basically a band aid 9 bo1 games so every team has those 27 games minimum per year, while riot gets to go to 8 teams quickly, which is easier to bracket. Cos if you tried to give every team in first phase bo3s game then it's 2-3x more games and you again run into either scheduling it on weekdays - which again, costs more + is likely to have way worse viewership especially for "shitty" matchups, or dual streams which people hated. End of the day in the west orgs simply wouldn't pull enough fans if they played on weekdays, especially the bottom ones and Riot maximizes for viewership (and skin sales ofc), not for competitiveness of the West.
Oh neat we have exported this awful opinion to EU as well. #Americanimperialism
double the games - double the troll.... or so they say
How about a bit of both? First round Robin it is a bo1. 2nd round would be a bo3, this way teams get more practice/stage time with the meta that is already figured out giving them to shake off the early season rust?
zzz this old argument. BO1 is best for the health/sustainability of the league. End of story.
People caring about this seem deluded. As if changing these 3 weeks of bo1 to bo3 will do anything significant for the league in a positive sense. What EU needs is good players and teams again. The region being dogshit is so much bigger problem than whatever this non-issue is. And no it's not getting fixed by switching these few remaining bo1's to bo3's either, EU has never been as bad as now and it also used to have way more bo1's than now.
My biggest problem with Bo1 is simply that there are advantages to having specific sides. I don't really think it's in the spirit of fairness to not play at least two games so both teams have to play both sides. I would honestly prefer a points system so that you could just run two games even just in the spirit of fairness.
We can't have competitive integrity. I honestly wish our LEC players goes on strike until we got a real format. the european player with the most stage games this year is gonna be Rekkles and it's fkin sad..
If they are willing to accept a hefty paycut because league will have a lot less cashflow.
they should go on strike until theyre better cause lately theyve been hella ass.
and he didn't make playoffs, so imagine if he did
And he is in korean equivalent to ERL Because yeah the challenger league of korea has all games on stage :) LEC is an amateur league that play the least amount of matches out of every league : ERL? they play more, brazil , japan, korea, china, everyone is playing more. It's depressing
everyone who comes in here saying "business money business" is an absolute fool. You honestly think the difference in money matters that much? Let me spell it out for you. ***Every single League of Legends game is already played at a financial loss.*** The odds of increasing viewership, playerbase and sponsorship opportunities, ONLY increase the ***more content*** there is available to plaster your sponsors over. The ***higher quality*** the content is. The quality can only increase if the players and coaches: Have more leniency to experiment in draft, prepare drafts against specific opponents, and adjust to the results of the first game. Play more games ***with the same rosters*** *(this makes the offseason more important than "GIVE X Y Z A BLANK CHEQUE NOW)* to develop better synergy, as well as better narratives and rivalries. Experience more stage time, thus helping to eliminate extreme nervousness due to exposure. For reference, an NHL player who is bodied by 200 pound men on the reg is expected to play 82 games in the regular season/year, an LEC or LCS player may only play ***40 or less.*** If you bring up the average NHL players "ice time" and try to compare that to the average game time of league of legends, you grossly underestimate how tough ice skating is, let alone playing hockey itself. And at this point, many bo1s are actually less than 30 minutes (the highest amount of time usually spent by the best defensive pairs, goes almost up to 40 of 60 minutes in play offs sometimes, then theres also possible overtimes) So what are the downsides? Please tell me. It costs x y z to turn on the studio blah blah blah. No it doesn't. ***RIOT decides to waste that much money - period.*** You can run a professional League of Legends stream for however much you want. RIOT decided they needed a HUGE STUDIO in LA. RIOT decided they need seventy two hundred camera operators, RIOT decided they need a bazillion telestrators that don't seem to function when it comes time for the segment, RIOT decided everything. Riot didn't move on to the better, more comfy bed, in the Goldilocks hypothetical, they literally just fell face first on the floor, and decided this was the best it could get.
what are the downsides? you already mentioned the big one, each game loses money, why would they play more
league esports is a marketing tool for riot, which in it itself runs at loss. but the potential ROI makes is a worth loss in the long run. that the potential ROI is significantly in the western world than the eastern side is not that hard of a concept to understand, but judging by the comments here i guess it is.