An in-depth look into the long-term implications that this offseason and all the sales of LCS spots has had on the future of professional League of Legends.
At the beginning of the 2015 season, several teams ran into a unique predicament. Riot’s rules for LCS ownership prevented them from owning two teams that were in the League Championship Series, Riot’s top flight of competitive League of Legends. This led to several teams selling one or both of their organizations to high-bidders, in what was at the time an innocuous logistical issue. Fast forward to the post-2015 off-season, and a tumultuous wave of teams have begun selling their spot, not because they’re facing the rules and regulations of owning two teams, but simply because outside investors are dropping huge piles of money into their laps, and the owner or owners are interested in cashing out.
Now, not every team seems to be selling simply because a cartoonishly large sum of money has been presented to them – in my mind’s eye, it comes in a big burlap sack with a green dollar sign on the front of it – some seem to simply be following suit of other high-profile sales. Elements is the most recent team to announce their potential sale, but teams like Team8, Dignitas EU and Team Coast, and Gravity Gaming have already sold their spots, and others, Team Impulse, and Gambit Gaming, are fishing for offers. This avalanche of sales is a result of, to my understanding, a poor wording of a previous rule and Riot’s inability or unwillingness to step in and stop it. There is no question that the selling of LCS spots is controversial, and beyond that, creates a weird dichotomy amongst fans. What if your favorite team had gotten sold to a hedge-fund investor you’ve never heard of, or some shady CEO that only cares about the potential money they'll receive ?
Beyond that, it’s simply an atrocious situation all around. Riot doesn’t look good allowing big names to come in, buy a team’s spot outright, rebrand everything, and stick around in the LCS. The teams selling certainly don’t retain their fan base (I’m certain that Gambit’s fans won’t stick around rooting for whatever company came in, uprooted the team, installed its own coaching/player staff, and began competing in the 2016 Spring split.) It almost entirely ignoring the plight of players who worked their butt off to qualify for the highest level, putting in countless hours practicing, scrimming, and competing in low-payoff/low-viewer Challenger tournaments just for the chance to compete in the LCS. It’s simply another round of Riot saying screw you to its players, who continue to have almost no long-term protection in the world of eSports.
The most egregious issue with the selling of team spots though is that it seems to completely circumvent the 3/5ths qualifying rule. Typically, a team only retains its qualification for the LCS when 3 of the 5 players that won the event to qualify are on the roster going into the next split. However, that’s clearly not the case with NRG, the organization that Team Coast sold their spot to. NRG is owned by the co-owner of NBA team the Sacramento Kings, and with his purchase of Team Coast, has released their roster for the 2016 Spring split, which includes Eon-Yeong "Impact" Jeong, Galen "Moon" Colgate, ChangSeok "GBM" Lee, Johnny "Altec" Ru, and Kevin "KonKwon" Kwon. KonKwon is the only member of the Team Coast challenger squad that qualified for the LCS, while 4 new members have been signed on to the team. Granted, two of these members were previous LCS competitors in Impact and Altec, but it stands to reason that Cristian "Cris" Rosales, ByeongHun "Shrimp" Lee, Isaac "Pekin Woof" Marconis and Brandon "Mash" Phan have to be feeling a little jaded that the spot they worked to qualify for is being occupied by an entirely different team, seemingly without them having any say in it whatsoever. Granted, not every situation is like this. Follow eSports, the team who bought Dignitas EU’s spot in the European LCS, have kept most of the original starting roster of the team as of this writing. However, the fact that this scenario is the exception and not the norm is the real issue.
And on a seemingly smaller, but still an all-too-important, level, the fans certainly aren't getting a positive net gain. Sure, the quality of play may improve slightly when teams, specifically in North America, have the ability to pull huge names due to money, but sustained rooting interest is what creates big brands. Teams like Counter-Logic Gaming and Team SoloMid don't have enormous fanbases due to their ability to pull in players, they have this die-hard support from their longevity and committment to the scene. Personally, I'm a Cloud9 fan, and I know if they sold their spot and competed with 4 or 5 completely new people in the upcoming split, I would instantly find a new team to root for. The playerbase, as much as the team and organization itself, is where a lot of fan rooting interest stems from. The risk that this could be a recurring situation is certainly not a risk worth taking as a fan. Why would I support these teams monetarily through purchasing merchandise when they might not even be around in a couple of months? It’s simply not healthy for growth.
Riot needs to work towards fixing this situation. With the way the current rules are worded, teams can and will do this every season. Selling off your organization when you’re struggling for cash shouldn’t be illegal, but being able to entirely uproot the franchise and install a new player base simply in the name of money, regardless of what the current player base feels, is detrimental to the growth of the game and can only certainly create bitter individuals who feel completely screwed out of a competitive opportunity, and jaded fans who feel like they’ve had their favorite teams or players ripped away. Unfortunately, Riot’s history of fixing glaring flaws with their LCS systems have been spotty at best, so we can only sit back and hope that something is done sooner rather than later.
