The LCS is dead, but its death may just save League of Legends esports

With the LCS being the very league that so much of LoL’s greatest moments were founded upon, it’s hard not to look upon its departure with a sense of dread. But, while the league dying may sound bad on paper, change was needed to keep the scene alive and thriving.

There aren’t any esports that have thrived for so long on a global scale quite like League of Legends has. A decade is an eternity in the fledgling world of esports, and LoL has only been growing in the time since it became the biggest esport in the world. It’s got a clear lead over everything else. For now.

In terms of viewership, records are still being broken on an international scale. Hell, FlyQuest’s nail-biter of a Worlds 2024 match against Gen.G hit over 3 million concurrent viewers. Usually, you only see that kind of viewership with teams like T1 and G2 that have massive followings beforehand.

Adela Sznajder/Riot Games

But, as venture capital has dried up and suits have realized that esports isn’t some massive moneymaker, the scene has struggled despite success in terms of viewership. And, while the financial woes of esports are a global issue no region has managed to escape, the problem has only been exacerbated in the LCS considering the region’s trend of rampant overspending and international disappointment.

In order to keep the league alive and sustainable, change was clearly needed. And, rather than just letting the league slowly die as the LCS continued to lose value, Riot is trying to revive the Americas’ scene with the LTA, also known as League of the Americas. In my eyes, this marks a turning point in League of Legends where we’ll either see the game prosper for decades or slowly fall into irrelevance.

Riot has a golden opportunity to bring interest in League of Legends to greater heights while stopping themselves from bleeding money, but only if they’re willing to swallow their pride and embrace the new age of esports: creator orgs and co-streamers.

LoL Esports may never make a direct profit—& that’s ok

Before looking at why changes are so desperately needed in the LCS, we first have to figure out what got the League of Legends scene in such a bad spot to begin with despite positive trends in esports viewership. How can the Worlds 2023 Finals pull in 6.4 million live viewers while the scene built around all that viewership crumbles?

Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

The foundation and promise the LCS and, to some extent, all League of Legends esports was built upon is a lie. At the time when franchise slots were being sold for 8-9 figures, teams backed by venture capitalists went into the league thinking they’d be hopping onto the next big thing and into the sort of profit traditional sports can provide.

However, if we look at one of the main ways traditional sports make money, it’s clear why that idea could never become a reality: Broadcast rights. With esports being provided for free on streaming services from the start, putting it behind a paywall would effectively kill LoL as an esport.

The problem isn’t that people wouldn’t be willing to pay to watch it or that LoL esports isn’t valuable, it’s that fans probably wouldn’t be willing to pay to watch it after having had it for free. Taking something that was free and forcing someone to pay for it is nigh impossible. The route for LoL and esports as a whole to make money like traditional sports do closed years ago, especially considering co-streamers are the premiere way to watch pro games now.

Official League of Legends broadcasts take up just a fraction of actual viewership, with co-streamers like Ibai, Caedrel, Kameto, and others taking up the majority of real estate when it comes to matches getting viewed. It should also come as no surprise that Ibai and Kameto owning KOI and Karmine Corp, respectively, has brought a ton of interest to the game that’d be completely nullified if they weren’t able to watch the games with their fans.

Not only would broadcast rights not function in the current landscape, but it’s likely much harder to sell ad space for Riot as well. Many co-streamers will go out of their way to click away from ad breaks on the broadcast, meaning that taking up ad space on any Riot event is much less valuable than the massive viewership would lead you to believe. Co-streaming is unstoppable in the current landscape, but it’ll inevitably doom the scene if Riot doesn’t find a way to make money off of all the viewership that they’re effectively losing.

Additionally, the esport is a necessary part of LoL doing well, too. That dream of competing on stage and playing at the absolute highest level is a core part of how League of Legends has maintained its appeal over the years, and that’s a double-edged sword.

On one hand, that competitive spirit keeps the game alive. On the other, this means LoL lives and dies on the success of its esport. If the pro scene dies, the game would inevitably be buried alongside it. Looking at just the viewership makes League look like it’s incredibly successful and has a healthy scene, but Riot is doing an incredibly poor job of monetizing that viewership.

Embracing creators and building storylines

League of Legends, as an esport, will likely never make money for Riot. It’s a money sink… in isolation. But, in reality, the competitive scene is the absolute best marketing campaign you can ask for. People creating such incredible storylines in your game does a better job of convincing people to play it than any single ad would.

If you’re reading this and live in North America or, hell, any country in the world, tell me honestly that FlyQuest’s matchup with Gen.G didn’t make you want to open League of Legends and hit solo queue after you watched it. Seeing an underdog team with a superstar rookie like FlyQuest’s Massu almost go the distance is the sort of thing that makes you want to grind and achieve that for yourself.

But there isn’t really a way to buy something from FlyQuest to represent your pride for them in-game, which feels like a massive missed opportunity. Or, well… There sort of is.

The first foray in adding teams to League of Legends directly in a way that wasn’t big-budget Worlds skins and relatively bland, basic team logos were a batch of emotes teams got to pick. So… what does an Ezreal emote of him emulating the nerd emoji tell me about FlyQuest? Absolutely nothing.

Aside from the mass controversy created with how a few of these team emotes were introduced, they also do nothing to further the actual esport. Despite League of Legends’ DNA being so intrinsically tied to its competitive scene and the story behind its players, Riot have generally done a poor job of connecting the two in-game. They basically create Worlds “event passes” that come with some unrelated skins, do a general Worlds skin to celebrate the event, and call it a day.

League of Legends gets updated bi-weekly with massive patches, and the pro leagues now stick closely to those patches. The fact that League of Legends doesn’t feel like a living, breathing part of the esport that allows people to represent their favorite teams and show pride in the players they love is mind-boggling. Or, at least it would be if the way teams have tried to build fandoms didn’t set the concept up to fail.

When I spoke with Disguised Toast last year, he told me that teams have absolutely no clue how to make content. He’s right. Sure, brands in esports have some level of power, but the teams do a really poor job of making people care about their players. If FlyQuest hadn’t had such a deep run, no one would have cared enough to buy cosmetics if they were made, and Riot making the in-game assets wouldn’t have turned a profit. It’s a failing of both the orgs and Riot in terms of making people care enough about their players to make them marketable in the long-term.

Every once in a while you’ll get someone like Team Liquid’s APA, a player who has a big enough personality to stand out and the skills to match. But that’s exceedingly rare, and many teams have buried themselves by constantly flipping through talent and seeking a title rather than building a fandom.

In a game where only one team can win, basing the path to profitability off of winning is inherently unsustainable. Almost every team that ever entered the esport was set up to fail, which could be part of why 100 Thieves are bowing out just when things have started looking up. Most teams have just run out of money to spend, and 100 Thieves is the latest in line considering their motivation for leaving the LTA is, by Riot’s account (and somewhat 100T’s through a very confusing announcement video), due to financial struggles.

The race to sign talent and win a championship over building a fandom has rotted the LCS from the inside out, and the LTA feels like Riot’s first real attempt to grapple with that reality before it’s too late. By hitting the reset button and opening the door to new ways to market and drum up interest in esports content, there’s a potential path forward.

With Disguised entering the LTA North from the get-go—not because of their performance, but because of their fandom—it indicates that Riot is beginning to understand just how essential creators and co-streamers are. If the orgs have done a poor job of maintaining fans and new players don’t have enough of a storyline to have a following, creators can bridge that gap as consistent pillars in the scene.

They have the potential to add the stability that the league has been missing, giving them reason to put actual team representation (and perhaps even some of content creators themselves) in the game.

Riot, please don’t miss this golden opportunity to fully ditch the mindset of making money off of pro leagues. It hasn’t worked for years, and it likely never will. Instead, the future is embracing the game of League of Legends itself and finding methods to give fans of the esport ways to show their pride and engage with team storylines in-game.

Finding ways to profit (and copying Valorant’s success)

Imagine this: If Riot charged $15 for an emote and a player icon under normal circumstances, they’d get a ton of backlash. That’s a lot for what boils down to two PNGs, right? But, if they charged $15 for a Disguised-themed icon and emote drawn like their stick figure style? People would eat it up, no questions asked.

Valorant’s team bundles are already hugely popular, and Riot has the opportunity to take that sort of theme to the next level with League of Legends.

People are much more likely to support a team with a $15-20 little bundle than spending almost $100 on a team’s jersey, and the in-game purchase would mean revenue gets cut between Riot and the orgs. It’s a win/win. Plus, in-game cosmetics don’t come with the overhead cost of running a merch store, and they can lead to a higher level of engagement with new and old audiences. A new player could get looped into playing LoL purely because they’re a fan of Disguised Toast, especially if they can rep him in-game.

Even someone like Ludwig, who is loosely connected to Shopify Rebellion via previous alliances with the org in Valorant, could be a great fit for instance. The man can’t play League of Legends to save his life, but I’d definitely buy a Luddy emote to drop on someone after I solo kill them in lane.

Plus, he’d be a great fit as a co-streamer, too. Having people involved in the community who aren’t good at the game can be a great way to make new players feel less intimidated. League of Legends is going to need fresh talent and players if the game wants to stay alive and compete with new releases.

Hopefully the death of the LCS marks a paradigm shift where League of Legends is firmly cemented as a way to make money off the esport rather than the esport being a way to make more money off of League of Legends. In my mind, that’s the only way forward.

And, while this whole conversation about monetization and turning big moments in the esport into profit sounds very corporate, League of Legends has to make money to survive. Passion and viewership only goes so far if there’s no money behind it.

If the traditional sports model doesn’t work for LoL esports, they have to find a new one, and the LTA feels like a step in the right direction by opening the path to more storylines and creator engagement with guest slots and a priority placed on bringing into a content creator org.

Player salaries have generally gone down, causing teams to spend less in general. Now we’ll have regional rivalries, with North and South America duking it out regularly between the LTA North and LTA South teams, and you can bet fans will be rooting for their countrymen on either side. And, if Riot is smart about it, there will be ways to rep your favorite teams, players, and creators in-game, too.

There are very clear routes for Riot to bring over Valorant’s monetization style and iterate upon what’s already working to make revenue in a way that doesn’t leave the consumer feeling betrayed. Looking at you, $450 Faker Ahri skin.

Riot Games

The path to sustainability within the League of Legends scene is more visible than ever, and there’s a chance that we could see things bounce back from the massive correction the industry has seen now that VC has dried up. Riot’s willingness to kill off the LCS and all those years of history to find a way forward is, in a way, them swallowing their pride. The optics of killing the LCS aren’t exactly great, but they had to bite the bullet and try something new at some point. Even if “new” just means copying and building upon what they’ve done in Valorant.

Better to kill off the league yourself than wait for it to die.

Unless the team you own is T1, you’re never going to make money from spending $10 million dollars on a roster, and teams in the LCS should never have been spending that kind of money in the first place. But, can teams within the LTA in both North and South spend a lowball seven figures/high six figures on a team and profit from a mix of sponsor revenue, possible in-game cosmetics, and a cut of the pie from Riot’s revenue sharing system? I think so.

There are still a lot of problems to solve when it comes to sustaining a new ecosystem like what we’ve got in esports. Anything that can get millions of viewers while simultaneously bleeding money so rapidly has a ton of deep-seeded issues.

However, the LTA and the increasing prominence of creator-owned teams across multiple regions gives me hope that there’s a path forward, that Riot can finally bridge the unnecessary gap between game and esport in terms of monetization. You don’t have to make an $130 Worlds skin bundle that takes months to make or an almost $500 skin to make people happy. Just give them ways to support teams that are affordable and accessible, and make those teams worth supporting in the first place.

If there’s any path that makes it so LoL can stand the test of time and last for decades as one of the biggest competitive games in the world, it’s one paved by content creators who can build and back their own teams while enjoying the show with their fans. Hopefully Riot doesn’t squander the opportunity to capitalize on that as we move away from the LCS and into a new era for competitive League of Legends.