There were 3 big news today in the League of Legends scene. On the one hand, Riot announced the introduction of a franchise system for the North American LCS league.
In the EU, popular caster Mitch proclaims "Crepo“Voorspoels that he is stepping down from his position for the time being.
And the third message brings us back to America, Team Echo Fox has announced the members of its new Challenger Team and the names sound more like fan dreams: Imaqtipie, Scarry, Dyrus, Voyboy and Shiphtur. With this, 5 legends come back from retirement to prove once again what they can do.
League of Legends - NA LCS Franchising
As of 2018, all teams in the North American LCS League will be Riot partners. That means there is no more relegation and each team gets a share of the LCS profit. This is a common system in other American sports like football (NFL) or basketball (NBA). This gives the teams and players financial security, on the other hand, of course, critics say that some teams may no longer exert themselves 100% if it is impossible to relegate.
Since eSports is still in its infancy, it is certainly a sensible step, especially at the beginning, to ensure more security and thus more sponsors. This step was developed by Riot together with the largest teams, so it reflects the wishes of both sides.
This also has advantages for the players, Riot guarantees them an annual salary of 75,000 US dollars and 35 % of league income. Due to the percentage participation, all parties are required to ensure a high quality of the games.
A further step is the revision of the 2nd league, called League of Legends Challenger Series. In this, the subsidiary teams of the LCS teams will compete against each other and allow the promotion of new talents.
10 million for a League seat, 20 million for Overwatch
Which teams will belong to the new LCS will be decided through an application and selection process until June 14th. There will also be a monetary entry barrier, 10 million Each team will have to spend US dollars on a spot. 5 million immediately, the rest over the next few years. In this way, Riot ensures that only stable teams with a minimum of infrastructure and sponsors participate.
By comparison, Blizzard has made headlines for the past few weeks with similar terms for the planned Overwatch League. Just the blizzard 20 million directly requested, and a possible profit sharing of the teams takes place in a few years at the earliest.
So it's not surprising that several organizations have fired their Overwatch teams. For half the price you can join a long-standing, proven league in one of the most famous games in the world. While Overwatch seems unsafe at least for the moment, but maybe Blizzard is now in a tight spot and is reconsidering the conditions.
You can find the official Riot announcement video at the beginning of the article.
You can have an almost one hour discussion between the Riot Esports representatives and the team owners / CEOs of Team SoloMid and Team Immortal at the colleagues of Yahoo Esports find.
EU LCS - Krepo resigns from his position as caster
Mitch Voorspoels, better known by his player name Krepo, announced his retirement from his position on the commentator team of the European LCS via Twitter.
- Mitch Voorspoels (@Krepo) 2nd June 2017
The whole thing is in response to spicy photos posted during the MSI tournament last month. A “friend” of Krepo had made these photos, which he had sent her in confidence, public and caused quite a stir. There were many rumors about this, including one from a previous blackmail attempt, but the exact details were not disclosed.
Definitely a sad moment for many League of Legends fans as Krepo was an extremely popular commentator. As a player at CLG_EU, he won almost the first season of the Korean league and has remained unforgettable to fans. Let's hope that after a while out of the limelight, he gets another chance and that his career isn't ruined for good.
Challenger Series Team Echo Fox brings back legendary veterans
Finally, something positive again, some of the most famous names in the American League of Legends scene are making their comeback.
- Michael "Imaqtpie" Santana
- Marcus "Dyrus" Hill
- William "scarra" Li
- Danny "Shiphtur" Le
- Joedat "Voyboy" Esfahani
The fan-favorite NA LCS analyst Mark "MarkZ" Zimmerman was hired as coach.
#Esports team @echofoxgg has signed 5 new LoL pros w / combined social reach of 7.8 million, including @Imaqtpielol, @scarra & @Voyboy
- Darren Heitner (@DarrenHeitner) 2nd June 2017
The team not only unites top-class players, all of whom have years of experience and a lot of titles won, but also some of the most famous Twitch steamers at the moment.
Dyrus, the former top planner of Team SoloMid, had announced his retirement in 2015 after 4 years and has been streaming almost daily on Twitch ever since. The desire to play live in front of a lot of fans and to feel their energy, as well as the thrill of the competition, made him active again.
The team does not promise to win for nothing, but they also want to have fun. With Imaqtpie in the shooter position that should be almost guaranteed. His Twitch Stream reaches numbers of 25,000-30,000 viewers every day, who are amused by his dry, but all the crazier sayings. The Imqtpie in the rankings has several accounts at Challenger level, shows that he is still in top form in terms of play.
Since Team Echo Fox is known for taking care of the players first, we can hope that in addition to training for the league, they still spend as much time streaming as possible. Otherwise we can certainly look forward to some crazy and funny LCS matches.
