In January of this year, Riot Games announced that the North American League of Legends Championship series will be undergoing a major shift that will change the region forever. With this will make changes to how players and teams and players make money and how they can influence the change. This also included franchising the teams that they have. So, all the teams within the NALCS had to send their financial records to see if they can still be in the NALCS. Fast forward to today and many people’s expectations were completely wrong. 4 teams that were originally there was rejected in the franchising. The teams that replaced them were: Optic Gaming, Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavilers, and the Houston Rockets. Most weren’t surprised that Optic Gaming was there, but many were questioning, why did 3 NBA teams become part of this group, with the others like CLG and TSM. Many memes started to pop up in the community. Others like the Immortals fans, whose team they were fans of, was rejected by the NALCS. But many do ask is this even going to help the NALCS?
For me I think yes, and they have been doing things in this location before. They had helped with other teams or has acquired them though controlling purchases. The most recent is Madison Square Garden with the partnership with CLG. And some NBA players have made teams before. NRG gaming was founded By Big Shaq, and Misfits gaming in Europe is also partner with Miami Heat. They have been in the scene for a long time, and it is no surprise that they would take some spots in the LCS. It gives some concerns however that since the new teams other than Optic have never even had set foot into NALCS let alone an E-Sport. However, what they lack there they have in formal sport skills that most NALCS team’s barley have except for CLG and TSM.
The other main reason is popularity. While League of Legends has bigger viewership than the NBA by a landslide (23 Mil to 70 Mil in viewers), it doesn’t have the long history like the NBA and while the view count is large, most are outside the US. The NBA also has a young fanbase just like the NALCS which make it much easier to merge with in the community. This can cause confusion with NBA fans seeing NALCS teams on the same page with Steph Curry, but many would be interested in this, and they know the game League of Legends. They just need a bigger number in the US to make this even better than they have.
New Teams, New Perspectives
Nickolas Mahabir
The last one is competition. If you are a fan of any NALCS team, you know that we are always mocked for having deficient performance in a world stage (except for CLG MSI 2016). And while it is still a long way to go, with the NBA teams joining, this will make it a lot more competitive this year. Since the NBA has much more traditional sports experience, this might make more teams try even harder to get to the top. And with the loss of the four teams before, it made many shakeups in a lot of team rosters. Many will still argue that that might not change the performance outside the region. It makes them better as there will be more changes that would be made to the original teams and make it even more completive next year
Source: Blitz Esports - Youtube