I was thinking recently about how interesting it is to be actively witnessing the formation and establishment of the rise of professional competitive gaming. Obviously having been around since like the 1960s long before I, or anyone else in my generation or younger were even born, competitive entities like MLB, NFL, NBA and even the NHL have been around for decades, and had the vast majority of their rules and infrastructure already build, established and requiring no more than occasional tweaks and union-related agreements to operate smoothly on a seasonal basis.
On account of that, I’m often fascinated by the way the ever-growing professional League of Legends scene as well as other professionally played video games operate in, by comparison, some very fast, loose and always changing rules and structure. I get that they’re the new kids on the block in professional competition, but it would be kind of nice to not have to re-read the rules and conditions of the league every single season. In LoL alone, the format has switched from best-of-ones, to best-of-threes, and then there’s all these weird convoluted tiers when it comes to playoff seeding, and they’ve basically invalidated the entire first half of a season, by making the first half winner not a lock for Worlds, while the winner of the second half is an automatic #1 seed, which makes absolutely no fucking sense to me at all.
The global professional League scene is just now at the tail end of just their seventh year, but it’s safe to say that aside from the map they play on, it’s entirely a different game now than in which it started when Europe were kings and Korea and China hadn’t even entered the playing field.
Regardless, a lot of my fascination stems from the fact that I’ve lived a life where in one hand, there are established sport leagues that have structure, power, money and balance, but in the other hand is a budding scene that’s trying their best to have what the established have, but all while trying to make their own footprint and making their own rules. There’s no middle ground when it comes to perception, so in the end, it just looks like professional gaming is perpetually throwing shit on the wall and looking for what sticks the best.
The big news now about the future of competitive League is that the North America region, the prodigal son that dictates the lands (despite never actually accomplishing anything on the competitive front) announced that starting in 2018, will operate their league with franchises, who must pay exorbitant amounts of money to enter, but will become permanent mainstays in the league, no longer having to fear about potentially getting kicked out for placing in the bottom tier of the standings. They will be given personal farm teams as well as revenue sharing, so for the teams that gain access into the league, it is a monumental step forward in the growth of their teams.
Problem is, Riot Games is, in my opinion, blatantly, cherry picking the squads they want to be in the new, franchised League Championship Series (LCS) moving forward, and I’m seeing a lot of perceived disloyalty and slighting of some of the organizations that helped build the whole scene outright.
Basically, LCS in North America has operated with ten teams, all playing for several weeks to establish rank, before a playoff system that grants the top six teams a chance at winning the split (half-season). And based on the results of the standings, they’re competing for entry into the bigger, World Championships, where a global championship is competed for.
So it would make sense that going into the 2018 season 8, that the surviving teams from season 7 would be the ten franchises, right?
Wrong.
Despite the fact that NA LCS operated business as usual when the summer split ended, with the bottom two teams competing with the top challenger teams (basically minor league), and ten teams were left standing for season 8, Riot decided to scrap everything once the franchising model was announced, and then the ten spots were suddenly up for sale, with Riot ultimately getting the final say on who gets in or not, regardless of who could afford to fork out the lofty $10M franchise fee + $3M for new organizations.
So, Phoenix1, the team who placed 9th in the Summer Split, survived the challenger Promotional tournament, and by the old rules, secured their spot in season 8, but is now out. They were allegedly declined by Riot, despite the fact that they applied for a spot and would presumably be capable of paying the $10M franchise fee. The same applied to Team EnVyUs, but they were actually a playoff team in the Summer Split, but were declined as well, for unknown reasons.
The two more eye-opening snubs of the new franchised league were Immortals, who had been a top-tier team since their inception, and just only recently been eliminated from Worlds. And then there is Dignitas, which is one of the genuine OG organizations of the entire League scene in which LCS was built on. Not only is Dignitas a legacy team, they’re also owned by the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, which means a lot of known-to-exist money is being declined, strangely.
On the flip side, it’s no surprise that among the “approved” organizations that have been granted and will compete in the franchised LCS in 2018 are teams like TSM, Cloud9 and Counter Logic Gaming; the three of them are literally the best teams in the region and have almost always been in the top-3 of every split and made every single Worlds. I wouldn’t even be surprised if any of them were even required to pay the full $10M franchise fees, that’s how important they are to the League scene.
However, it’s the approved entry of Team Liquid and Echo Fox that have me scrunching my brow and raises flags of cherry-picking. Team Liquid has now been twice in a row, the worst team in NA, placing in the bottom two for two straight splits, but by the grace of god, coming through during the promotion tournaments, and retaining their LCS spots. And Echo Fox hasn’t been that much better, placing 8th in the standings all throughout season 7. But the thing is, Team Liquid is one of the largest gaming organizations in the world today, having presence in not just League, but StarCraft, Overwatch, Counterstrike, Heroes of the Storm and even Smash Bros. And Echo Fox is owned by former NBA player Rick Fox, who is an LA mainstay and business savvy person who was amongst the first legitimate North American athletes to get their foot in the door during the rise of competitive gaming.
The two other confirmed LCS organizations granted spots in 2018 are OpTic Gaming, who isn’t a stranger to eSports, but hasn’t fielded a League team before. But they are known to have investments from the Texas Rangers MLB club. And then there is a spot purchased by the co-owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors that will be built either from the ground up with a new team or identity, or they’ll just buy some other team and field them in their spot.
Regardless, it seems pretty blatant to me that Riot is cherry-picking who they want to have franchises in their league, and a lot of appears to be based on money. I mean, I get that the goal of all business is make money and profit, but I wholly believe it’s still possible to do such without looking so greedy and without burning bridges with the contributors who made your success possible in the first place.
Team Liquid is garbage, and Echo Fox isn’t much better. Immortals was literally, amongst the best teams on the planet, and the entire League scene wouldn’t have grown at all without the contributions of Dignitas. I have a hard time that those rejected wouldn’t be been able to adhere to the financial commitments of franchising, since there’s absurd amounts of money being thrown at eSports now, but it’s basically just a matter of Riot hand-picking their squads for reasons that aren’t just money. I guess it doesn’t hurt that the noobs in the room have deep connections with rich and powerful sports organizations. But Dignitas is also owned by an NBA team; however, the 76ers are a shit team, and Riot must not want to associate with them either.
FlyQuest is unspoken for at the time I’m writing this; considering they’re owned by the middling Milwaukee Bucks, I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that they’re not good enough for Rito’s coffers, and will probably get the axe. And then be replaced by like some organization with ties to like, the Los Angeles Dodgers or something.
Basically, the analogy to this whole story would be like if the NFL decided to restructure, and then it kicked out the Chicago Bears and the Washington Redskins, regardless of their history in the league, but kept the Los Angeles Rams and the San Diego Los Angeles Chargers, while introducing two new teams into the league that happened to be owned by billionaires.
I feel like Riot is operating in this pretentious manner because Overwatch beat them to the punch with the formation of their own franchised league, and they’re trying to compensate by attempting to make themselves look more exclusive and harder to get into, so the perception is that they’re still the kings of eSports.
Ultimately, I still enjoy playing League and I can still find enjoyment at watching the game be played at its highest level, but I can’t help but feel that the ethics and business practices of Riot are a little fast and loose, lacking in integrity, and unnervingly hungry for money.
