Another team leaves the Riot ecosystem.
When I played in the Italian League, three organizations with good will, resources, budget, and love for the game
@mackoesports ,
@DsyreEsports , and
@EsportAtleta also left it. The main reason was that there was no offseason tournament, so there wasn’t a single official tournament game played for five months.
Lately I saw
@geekay_esports leaving as well, and you can probably name many more examples.
League of Legends is one of the biggest esports games in the world. Competition should thrive, but in this system it is being suppressed. Very often, great organizations are forced to leave, questionable organizations are getting in, and who are the biggest victims? Pro players, coaches, managers and fans.
What is the reason? The monopoly over tournaments, the franchise system, and the regional leagues system. Riot Games is in charge of it all, and they are not doing the best job, so the situation just keeps getting worse.
How could Riot Games fix this? I have an idea. They could create an ecosystem where competition thrives, where tournament organizers compete to make better tournaments with better prize pools, organizations compete to build better staff and rosters, teams compete to be better, players compete individually, and everyone competes in social media, marketing skills, and fan engagement.
Riot could give a free hand to tournament organizers. Let players play in a few different tournaments and leagues at the same time. Let them choose which ones they want to play and which ones work best with their schedule.
How can Riot implement this in the current state?
Decide which regional leagues are doing well and let them continue. But probably around half of the regional leagues that struggle with their esport organizations and with viewership, should be restructured. Use the budget that was used to maintain them for regional tournaments with open qualifiers and prize pools. Create international tournaments where organizations outside the Major Leagues can qualify for EMEA Masters.
Let’s think about the three teams I mentioned earlier in the Italian League Dsyre, Macko, Atleta. They all loved to compete against each other. In this proposed ecosystem, they could compete in their own region, then also compete internationally for a spot in EMEA Masters, and also compete in multiple tournaments organized by different tournament organizers, all without long breaks (well… if they hadn’t left the Riot ecosystem).
With all of that, Riot Games would benefit a lot, because many more people would get involved, which in the end would result in a bigger player base.
What do You think?