International competition is the lifeblood of esports. The viewership is just on another level entirely. Both for MSI and Worlds.
10 international BO5s a year is just way too few. Especially when a big chunk of them were Korea vs Korea or China vs China, so it probably ended up being like 7-8 a year on average.
7 to 8 international bo5s in a full fucking year. No wonder we didn’t see shit like Rookie vs Faker bo5 ever. Or Knight vs Chovy.
LoL esports has been enjoyable but it could have been soooooo much better, it’s actually wild.
Imagine how insanely hype history would be if we saw the regions clash more often. There are so many great players we didn’t really get to see compete out of their regions very often.
It’s much better with new MSI format and with the upcoming 3rd international tournament next year but this should have been a thing for many years already. I can’t believe they dragged their feet that much.
IMO, there are multiple problems from different angles (and some of them not solved yet).
We had (and we still have at Worlds) too little best-of-5 with a week long gap. Sure, Riot wants to make it as hype as possible, media days, higher viewership on weekend, sure, sure.
But Gen.G and to some degree JDG shows that momentum is very important. BLG at MSI shows that momentum is very important. And still Riot introduces looooooong pause and teams basically can start look shaky.
Also, you might notice that quite often quality of Finals is nowhere close to some Quarters and Semis. The score still can be full 5 games, it is still hype, but from pure analytical perspective with cold heart it is clear that the quality of game itself decreases, we see a higher number of mistakes. You can’t from the pure analytical point compare T1-JDG in Semis 2022 and T1-DRX in Finals. Deft story and win was hype as fuck, but if we just watch quality of games, you will notice a substantial decrease in all aspects.
Apart of losing momentum, the week gap also introduces another big problem: no decent scrim partners, and it explains quality of game degradation. When it is quarters you still have a lot of teams around. In Semis, if it is not like T1 now, you still have someone to scrim. Sure, academy rosters, try-outs, amateur teams is all good, but let’s be realistic - the peak of the game is when teams can scrim normal teams. I still recon 2019 Mikyx words that last week before Finals you have no one to play, you just sit in hotel nervous, play random soloq and slowly burning inside. Same thing was told multiple years by multiple players who play finals: last week is a torture and brings nothing good, you lose a lot of skills due to this awkward wait. And every fucking year we see the same problem, they force finalists to literally waste 1 week, lost all momentum, don’t practice well and then “oh why Finals never feels like peak of the game”, really?
The problem here is that Riot has no better monetization than just sponsors. We don’t sell much tickets (regularly), we don’t sell broadcast rights. Riot just grab sponsors and sponsors pay. And to force them pay more, Riot have to show high numbers. “Your ad was watched by 3 million viewers!!!” it sounds cool and sells it to sponsors, but to have those high numbers Riot sacrifices everything: team, practice, momentum, quality and quantity of games. Everything is sacrificed for it.
All big sports have big games on weekdays. UEFA Champions League Semis is on weekday. FIFA World Cup Semis is on weekday. No one cries, people are people, they CAN sit and watch a few best-of-5 few times per year, RIOT please stop pretending you know better than us what we should do and please give us high quality tournament and high quality games and not that shitty product which every Worlds post-Quarters is