Seeing as there was a NA LCS AMA yesterday with lots of people asking questions about EU, I think it's time for an EU LCS AMA too. Especially since I don't think that the EU team has ever done one.
Here are some questions:
-
There have already been reports that Romain (one of the biggest EU personalities), Zven and Mithy (one of EU's strongest botlanes), and possibly Jankos (one of EU's strogest junglers) have been imported by NA teams. On top of that, Optic imported an EU analyst, Pr0lly went back to NA, and we will likely get a lot more of these news in the coming days/weeks. How do you plan on preventing that from happening in the future so that Europe keeps top talent in the league?
-
Follow-up: If you solely want to rely on "finding new talent" instead of also retaining top EU players in EU, then how can the region ever grow? The way I see it right now is that EU always has to rebuild their talent and rosters instead of improving on the already existing talent pool. Maybe the region can miraculously maintain/rebuild their current skill level, but losing top players and now even personalities every year does certainly not help EU grow or spur interest.
-
Why has there been apparently little coordination between Riot NA and Riot EU? The current situation looks like that for an entire year now, EU teams will be umable to compete with NA teams financially, simply due to how Riot has structured both leagues.
-
In your S4 announcement, you said this: http://www.surrenderat20.net/2013/12/esports-update-lcs-changes-in-2014-eg.html
To better accommodate international fans, the EU LCS is moving to Thursday and Friday while the NA LCS is moving to Saturday and Sunday. Times are also changing. The NA LCS will begin at 12:00PM (Noon) PST / 21:00 CET each day, while the EU LCS will begin at 10:00AM PST / 17:00 CET.
This will make it easier for European players to watch the NA LCS as well as increasing the visibility of the EU LCS for North American players.
In your S8 announcement, you said this: https://eu.lolesports.com/en/articles/eu-lcs-in-2018-and-beyond
We wanted to assess which days would be best for European fans. We took a look at player feedback around the broadcast days and found overall that Thursday was the least preferred day, Saturday was the best and Friday/Sunday were extremely close, with Friday scoring slightly higher. We’re still looking into start times - we’re aiming to begin later than 5pm CET, but will confirm in the next few months.
Why did it take Riot 4 years to realise that the Thursday/Friday schedule, especially with such early starting times, was not good for EU? In the S8 announcement, you said you wanted to asses which days would be best for European fans. Was this not considered in your S4 changes?
-
You said you wanted a partnership (franchise) system for EU in 2019. Just very broadly, will this be a copy of the NA system or do you plan on making any improvements to it? After all, you now have a full year to see what works well in NA, what doesn't work well, and to then improve the things that aren't working so well in NA for the EU region.
