League Of Legends

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Croetec

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I'd love to see money spent on the team comparison, Steve throwing money out the window like a trust fund baby.
 
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Lasch

Trakanon Raider
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If I were to guess salaries

10 FLY
9 CLG
???
1 TL - it is insane they're still paying for goldenglue, college for youngbin, and adrian.
 

Enzee

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Steve made some kind of sponsorship deal this year, right? I think its only since then that they had the money to do these things. He wants to avoid relegation because of some kind of franchising opportunity that starts next year for the LCS teams. I heard about it on a podcast, but i dont know the details. It sounds like a way for the lcs teams to make a big pay day, so it became more important then ever to be qualified next split for the lower teams.
 

Lasch

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Looked into it. Dude is just spending other people's money now.

Team Liquid has announced that it has sold the controlling interest of its esports organization to an ownership group led by Peter Guber and Ted Leonsis. Guber is the co-owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA, the Los Angeles Dodgers of MLB, and Los Angeles Football Club soccer team. Leonsis runs Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Washington Capitals NHL team, the Washington Wizards basketball team, the Washington Mystics women’s basketball team, and the Washington Valor arena football team. Now, they’re investing in an esports industry worth $493 million and growing. Intelligence firm Newzoo projects that esports will drive $1.1 billion in revenues by 2019, which makes the market ripe for investing.

Magic Johnson, the Hall of Fame basketball player and Lakers icon, is also a part of the investing co-ownership group. Guber also runs the Mandalay Entertainment Group, which releases movies to global markets. He previously worked for Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures. Leonsis is a co-founder and partner at Revolution Growth, a $1 billion set of investment funds. He was previously a senior executive at AOL.​
 

Croetec

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Makes me wonder when the esports bubble will pop for the first time, everyone wants to invest into something successful but in reality most of these games don't last more then 5-10 years. Entire thing feels like the dot com boom in the late 90's where everyone just wants to invest into the first thing they see but eventually a lot of these teams get into problems with not paying, not performing, or treating the scene as a traditional sports environment for sports that have been established for a 100+ years for one type of game and don't realize things like LoL won't be around forever and MOBA's in general out the big two aren't a smart investment.
 

Ravishing

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Makes me wonder when the esports bubble will pop for the first time, everyone wants to invest into something successful but in reality most of these games don't last more then 5-10 years. Entire thing feels like the dot com boom in the late 90's where everyone just wants to invest into the first thing they see but eventually a lot of these teams get into problems with not paying, not performing, or treating the scene as a traditional sports environment for sports that have been established for a 100+ years for one type of game and don't realize things like LoL won't be around forever and MOBA's in general out the big two aren't a smart investment.

I also wonder if/when the LoL bubble will pop. Competitive is the main thing keeping it propped up. I practically never play the game but am able to watch a lot of the matches. It's much more viewer friendly than an FPS (imo), at least until FPS games put in better spectator cameras and/or don't rely on first-person view. I hate watching FPS from a player perspective.

I do think LoL can go another 3-5 years at least. We see WoW on their 13th year already. This is LoL's 8th. Big games are showing to have tremendous lifespan now.

Really what will kill it is when another game pops on the scene and I think game design is in a weird limbo right now. Who is really going to take on LoL? You just don't do that as a wise investor/game dev.

CS:GO and OW are good for FPS fans but MOBAs clearly appeal to more as a spectator esport.

------------

Also, this "esports bubble" is kinda a myth. These orgs don't limit themselves to a single game. These investors are learning the scene but it's not reliant on a single game. Sure, LoL is the biggest, so to be taken seriously you want to be in the biggest game. But the goal isn't to ONLY be in LoL. What happens is LoL orgs tend to become the most recognized simply because there is a such a huge LoL viewership. So now when we see a C9/TL or even the more obscure orgs in other games, you gravitate to the players under the tag you are a fan of.

The bubble I see is player salaries / coaches / management / infrastructure and if they can realistically get a return on investment.

------------

TL;DR: There is certainly a bubble, but it's not tied to the games.
 

Enzee

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'Esports' won't have a bubble pop, but specific games might. Esports is going to continue to be a thing, and it'll be even bigger as more people grow up with these things around their entire life. Anyone over 40 doesn't really 'get' esports, but it's huge to the 30 and younger group. The younger you go, the more popular it is. In another 10 years, it'll overtake some of the sports that are starting to fall off in popularity (baseball/hockey). It'll be behind football and basketball in the US, and soccer/basketball/whatever internationally, but bigger then most of the others. A 10 year old kid nowadays is bored to death of baseball, but he can actually play the same game as his esport heroes and possibly make it to the same level by the time he's old enough.

It's a similar thing with youtube celebrities. They have huge followings with the millenials and young kids. Many don't even watch regular TV, just youtube channels.
 

zombiewizardhawk

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Just went 1/0/12 on Blitz with #1 kill participation on my team and got a freaking A+ instead of an S to get my last level 7 token.. meanwhile 3 other people on my team all got S with multiple deaths/less participation/etc... >_<

Yeah I don't think LoL or Dota have the staying power to become long-term esports but esports in general aren't going anywhere for a long time.

Then again, who knows. Maybe 10 years from now i'll still be hard-stuck in silver raging at my noob teammates in summoner's rift.
 
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Vimeseh

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If DoTA2 is anything to go by then league and DoTA will survive just fine as long as you just remake the game for current generation users. So Five or so years from now we'll probably be playing/watching LoL2 and DoTA3.
 

Ravishing

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If DoTA2 is anything to go by then league and DoTA will survive just fine as long as you just remake the game for current generation users. So Five or so years from now we'll probably be playing/watching LoL2 and DoTA3.

I think the Riot model is just update the existing game. I doubt they'll rebuild from scratch unless there are some features that just can't be implemented with the current engine. Compared to original release, LoL is already LoL2. Everything has been redone at least once, sometimes more. From splash art, client, map, and champion rehauls.
 

littles

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It's pretty much what people were asking for way back when cs 1.6 was the most popular fps, keep the systems and upgrade graphics (cs source wasn't this) and the game will last forever because the systems are fun/nearly perfect.
 

Croetec

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I think LoL will need its next incarnation within 3-4 years, the level of spaghetti code they have now must make it hard to actually fix bugs and implement systems without running into bigger delays. Take that esports money and actually try to make a somewhat future proof client.
 

Ravishing

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I think if LoL2 is ever made they need to embrace spectator mode/esports even more and give us sweet ground-level camera views and higher quality imagery for spectators. Like more realistic skyboxes and textures but keep the main game low-res for players.
 

Kiki

Log Wizard
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I imagine having spectator mode for LCS in VR with the ability to move and look at whatever you want, but with caster audio and them drawing on the map, including full rewind of both.
 

Tenks

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I've heard that is actually more money to be made in giving a poor in-game spectator experience. If they are in-game you can't drive ads. If it is broadcast on twitch you can have sponsor logos everywhere, commercials during downtime, product placement and things like that. Sure you could have LCS sponsored by Pepsi and there are Pepsi logos on the ground not dis-similar to DOTA2 but the ways and ability to advertise are fewer in-client.
 

Ravishing

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I've heard that is actually more money to be made in giving a poor in-game spectator experience. If they are in-game you can't drive ads. If it is broadcast on twitch you can have sponsor logos everywhere, commercials during downtime, product placement and things like that. Sure you could have LCS sponsored by Pepsi and there are Pepsi logos on the ground not dis-similar to DOTA2 but the ways and ability to advertise are fewer in-client.
Yea I meant for broadcast purposes tbh, the VR stuff as posted above isn't my cup of tea anyway, I want to chill, not have to control the stuff myself. LoL doesn't have in-game spectating for the current LCS games anyway.

I figure they could setup some beefy processing computers to be able to broadcast a higher quality textured game, and give us different perspectives with higher detailed character models, would be awesome.
 

Kiki

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You could always force VR commercials and put billboards on the edges of the map. It would be cool to see such technology, I wonder if it would improve the overwatch experience.
 

Amzin

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I think LoL will need its next incarnation within 3-4 years, the level of spaghetti code they have now must make it hard to actually fix bugs and implement systems without running into bigger delays. Take that esports money and actually try to make a somewhat future proof client.

They're just taking the people they would have do that, and having them rewrite the existing game though. They've rewritten, from the ground up, a pretty significant chunk of the gaming, with the specific goals of making it more modular, change-friendly, patch-friendly, etc. and while they have a ways to go yet, they've done a pretty remarkable job overall. A lot of hero-breaking bugs get hotfixed in a day now as opposed to a week, and even on the competitive level they get champs disabled for bugs re-enabled by the next weekend, and that's polished enough for pro-level competition, so that's a big deal. And on top of that they are FINALLY adding practice mode, replays, they have that weird-crazy Chrono-break thing for restoring comp games to just before a hiccup happened, etc.

And that's on top of the graphical updates, this is like the 3rd or 4th complete redo of summoner's rift and there's no reason they couldn't bump another one out either. Like, I think we'll get another game from Riot someday, but they seem really committed to just really remaking LoL from within itself, which is new but also would avoid a lot of issues down the line if they can pull it off.
 
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Enzee

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The new client is part of them remaking the game, too. A big part of it, supposedly. Like, its the big step they have to take to even be able to work on other parts of the game.