Is Franchising a key step to stability in the LCS?

Recently fans of the LCS and owners of LCS teams, including Jack Etienne (Cloud9) and Rick Fox (Echo Fox), have spoken about the necessity of Franchising in the LCS. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘Franchising’ refers to LCS teams becoming permanent fixtures of the league, as opposed to the current system of Promotions and Relegations. From Etienne and Fox’s interviews, it seems this is mostly a way of adding more stability in the scene both for ownership and for players.

This isn’t an entirely black and white issue. It isn’t clear whether Franchising is universally good or bad, and I think making that determination without actually trying it out is difficult (likely why Riot is being so cautious about it). There are a lot of issues at stake, and a lot of issues that contribute to stability — franchising is just one. Franchising is a means to an end, it doesn’t entirely solve the problem of stability, and it’s certainly not the only method of doing so.

There are a lot of complications when talking about the global esports landscape, and every game and every region manages their scenes in a different way. Some of this column will broadly address the esports scene in general and some will specifically speak to the Western League of Legends scene.

We’ll begin with the recent Interregional Movement Policy (IMP), as I think the stances taken by Riot in this regard actually help us discover some possible solutions to other issues we see in professional League. You can hear more about how the IMP affects international League of Legends from the most recent episode of Shotcallers I recorded with Kelsey Moser and my co-host Gaston Perez. But I’ll speak to that briefly here since it’s relevant to longevity and stability.

The most obvious implications of the IMP are in China, since regional players are actually being forced out of the scene because of Chinese team owners’ obsession with importing Korean players. According to Kelsey, some Chinese owners will actually import Koreans even if that player is generally thought of as an inferior player than the starter they currently have.

This problem is similar in North America, but not as bad simply because the money in the Chinese scene hasn’t migrated over to the NA LCS (yet). But there is another angle to why Riot doesn’t necessarily want a league full of Korean players.

Riot is somewhat forced into the IMP because of the inherent nationalism in North American League of Legends. This actually appears to be a more American-centric problem than a general problem with the esports scene.

In the European Football world, there are plenty of international stars from a multitude of regions, including South America, Africa, Asia, and even North America, that have played on teams in the English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and other premier Football leagues. Think of players like Ricardo Kaka, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, and Shinji Okazaki.

Fans of these squads have generally taken to foreign stars quickly, though to what level that’s because of their personality, integration into local culture, or prowess of the game is up for debate. This also seems to hold across other esports titles like DOTA where there are many multi-national squads that still have a passionate fan base, and the sport seems to have a bigger global appeal than a regional appeal (e.g. there are Alliance fans in the US, despite them being a Swedish squad, Team Secret is comprised of players from different continents with an international fan base).

In League of Legends, there are certainly players like Huni, GBM, or Lustboy who have been beloved by Western fans for a multitude of reasons. However, there are also players like Piglet, Impact, or Pirean who have been less popular, though still skilled players. There are common themes among the former three, such as their attempts to integrate and learn to speak English, as well with a strong social media and streaming presence or electric personality. But the exact reason is hard to nail down to a science.

From the outside, Riot seems to treat cases like Huni are more the exception than the rule. Because what’s actually wrong with foreign players dominating in the NA LCS if the fan base supports them?

Not that I think that the NA LCS would be healthier with rosters of four or more Korean players, but I question the implied notion that American fans will not welcome Korean players (provided they actually care about being popular like those mentioned earlier).

Given the uniformity of the IMP, I believe you can also apply this to each local region (including China). But I actually am not sure this is true. Western StarCraft II players like Jinro, HuK, and IdrA were extremely popular in Korea for the duration they played in the GSL, despite the fact they were foreigners seeing success in a local scene. Again though, they still played in a league that was dominated by local players. It’s possible that with a higher concentration of Western players that local fans might have also become disenfranchised.

But this isn’t the only issue. In order for North American players to become elite pros in the LCS, the competitive ecosystem needs to groom more players through that system. Unfortunately, one of the problems with that is there is virtually no competitive ecosystem in North America. And one might say that even for the levels that exist, the Challenger Series is not successful in raising local talent.

Compare the systems that exist in traditional sports to League of Legends (or any esport for that matter). Starting at the bottom you have recreational leagues, little league, middle school, high school, youth camps, NCAA, development leagues, junior leagues, etc. There are so many levels of organized and competitive play, that by the time players get to the top, there is an enormous player pool that is familiar with the competitive aspects of traditional sports.

In esports there just aren’t enough tournament systems in the lower ranks of play to make a meaningful difference in the number of players.

Consider a player like Inori, who despite only playing for half of the Summer Split, is getting consideration for Rookie of the Split (of course he probably won’t win because of Biofrost, but the point still remains). Anyone who had played in high Elo knew Inori was a very good player. He’s been great in Masters and Challenger for a very long time, but only recently did people discover how great he is in a competitive context.

Other than the NA CS, there really aren’t many avenues for him to show off his skillset. There need to be more programs at lower levels so that owners and general managers of LCS teams can discover burgeoning talent. Scouting the NA Challenger and Masters tiers is effective, but it’s impossible to know how well their raw Solo Queue talent will transfer to competitive.

This is why so many American and Chinese owners look to Korea first. In general, the conversion rate of successful Solo Queue stars to pros is extremely high for Korean players, in every region that they play in. Even someone like Rush who entered the scene very raw, without a lot of competitive understanding, very quickly became the MVP of the NA LCS in his second split.

This is the problem that the IMP aims to solve, but it’s only half of the problem. The other half is fixing the competitive ecosystem at lower levels, and it doesn’t appear to be something that’s being examined.

Right now, the Challenger Series is where Riot hopes the stars of tomorrow will be discovered — that LCS teams will find the diamonds in the rough. But the problem is that teams are not incentivized to play with the stars of tomorrow. Just look at Cloud9 Challenger: a team full of LCS veterans and one prospect. The Cloud9 organization is about to get a $1 million payoff because they essentially put an LCS-ready roster in Challenger.

The fact that the path to the LCS and the “development” League are the same thing is actually putting two goals at odds with each other — giving teams a path to pro and growing new talent. As long as there is this level financial incentive to win Challenger, there will be a limit to the risk an NA CS owner will want to take, especially when new talents that get discovered in Challenger will likely get signed by a different LCS owner.

So what needs to happen?

Franchising isn’t necessarily the answer, but if you don’t want to franchise, you need a farm system or a lower level ecosystem that isn’t tied to amateur teams’ path to pro. Let pro teams have sister teams that battle in a lower level league where there is less on the line (less money, no path to LCS, etc) so that pro teams can take chances on developing talent.

But honestly, Franchising could be a convenient answer to a lot of problems. A lot of the lack of talent is due to teams being afraid to experiment with rosters because of the fear of falling out of the LCS. And currently, there is no way to try out these players in an organized fashion other than the NA CS. Imagine if Team Liquid didn’t have an academy team in Challenger? Dardoch, Matt, and Lourlo might not be in the LCS today.

Now, imagine if EVERY team in the LCS had an academy team? How much new talent would be discovered through that system?

Once you understand how unusual that group of Liquid players is, you understand how inadequate the current system is.

So Riot is on the right track, but they are missing a huge piece of the puzzle. And Riot isn’t alone in this, in fact most companies haven’t even built an ecosystem where franchising would even be possible. But given that Riot is best positioned to enact meaningful change, they still have to set the pace for everyone else.

And I hope they do.

Frank Fields is an esports industry veteran of 12+ years and has worked with IPL, Blizzard and Riot Games. Follow him on Twitter @FFMirhi