LOL Esport, also known as League of Legends competitive gaming, has been around since 2009. Millions of people tune in every week to watch their favorite teams compete on Twitch for prizemoney that can reach into the millions. The game itself is played by 27 million daily users, 44 million monthly users and 67 million registered players worldwide. On the surface, it seems like League is at the top of its game with no end in sight. But there are some strong indicators that suggest otherwise.
LOL, Esport has one of, if not the most significant player base in the world. Millions tune in to watch their favorite team or player compete on Twitch through streaming services like Twitch. Tv, Own3D and hitbox every day for multiple tournaments around the globe. The most famous tournament scene is hosted by Riot Games, which hosts a World Championship series that is hosted in different venues every year. Since being its conception of being one of the most-watched eSport worldwide being streamed on sites like Twitch and Own3D. The viewership numbers have been ever-increasing, as seen below with League of Legends Season 3 World Championships “peaked at over 8.5 million concurrent viewers, setting a new record for eSports”. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true as being only partnered with Twitch, and the numbers on additional sites may be higher.
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Talking about payouts of LOL Esports:-
The teams participating can also receive prizemoney ranging from $150,000 to $2 million if they win first place (the first place prize was ~$1 million in Season 1, but was ~$2 million for Season 3). Riot Games provides the salaries from the prizemoney to their players and teams because they do not want their players to feel forced into participating.
There are multiple teams that get paid salaries. The highest one so far was $3,200 per month for Team SoloMid at the beginning of 2014. This was before Riot Games decided to increase their salary to $10,000 a month in December 2014 because “Azubu’s plans did not meet the minimum requirements.” It is clear that Riot Games and other companies that host tournaments and leagues want to increase the standard of living for their players, so they do not feel forced to participate.
Is LOL Esport really in Trouble?
There are some significant indicators that suggest LoL eSport is in Trouble. The first one is the constantly decreasing player base of LoL on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. Another indicator is the lack of viewership on some significant tournaments, more specifically, the world championship. Even this would say there are no viewers on any other tournaments besides Worlds, but it is clear that it doesn’t have the viewership numbers as previous years right now at this very moment. Being multiple reasons for this, the first being that Worlds 2014 was held in South Korea and the second being that Riot Games made a deal with only one streaming site, which is Twitch. Tv. While this may have been an initially intelligent decision to promote their product, it has ultimately had some adverse effects as the viewership numbers are not as high as they were for previous years on additional sites like Own3D and hitbox, for example. In addition to this lack of viewership, there are multiple other reasons for this, including the fact that Riot Games announced they would not be working with additional streaming sites. The reasoning behind this was that “it made it difficult to protect players from other sites running rogue tournaments” (Riot Games), which in turn has led to some negative impacts on the LoL Esport Scene.
When did LOL Esports came to Esports world?
The LOL Esport itself has been around since 2009 and is growing at a very steady pace. In 2014 there were 67 million registered players worldwide and a daily player base of 27 million people. This makes the Esport market very big and open for future developments. But this doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved or expanded further to reach out to more players, viewers and fans.
Esports has undoubtedly become a worldwide sensation in this day age, with major international tournaments offering upwards of 6 figure prizes to the winning teams along with endorsements from big sports stars around the world.
