Can NA emulate what KC did by artificial regionality?

[obsidian pollen]

Feel biggest thing separating NA and LEC is the opportunity to connect to the community better. LEC has different avenues due to ERLs promoting local investment that translates over to LEC due to rookies possibly being promoted which I think contributes to the 6% loss in viewership as opposed to NAs 20%. LCS is just too disconnected atm and can’t hold viewers, due to lack of opportunity to connect and keep the community involved with it being in LA.

KC was successful in France cause they regularly held community events, which along side LFL boosted them. Feel only way to emulate this is to have NACL East/West 8 teams in each division for a total of 16. And the top 3 from each side faces off in proving grounds. Seeing the amount of teams in NACL: Qualifiers i feel it’s possible, and might be able to rekindle fandom in a new way not seen in NA. We already have an east coast (FEAR) and a west coast (DSG) team in NACL anyways.

Is easier now to accomplish because NACL is online other than the final, and NACL viewers ship this year was decent showing there is interest. And providing a type of connection night build upon that

[chilly kayak]

I think this is a great post, and a pretty good insightful topic, but well thought out stuff, ironically, dont do well in (queue the clown music) e-sports serious. Reddit brains and all that, so don't let the lack of replies in the future get you down. will try to keep the thread alive though, since I think its a great topic.

First off, I dont think regions in NA work that well, since in murica, not many ppl are that attached to their state to such a degree that they would foam at the mouth if you insult the state. Not murican but unless you are texan or from idaho, chances are you dont give too much of a fuck. However, I do think east vs west can help with ping if rito keep both servers open.

As for community events, I do think LCS orgs can do a way better job connecting with fans, like 400% more. But for NACL, I don't think they have many fans to begin with and most of them are so grassroots anyways they have no choice but to do mini events to get fans to begin with.

I think the overall theme to make artificial regions to stoke fandoms or even create a stir would make a lot more sense if there were a lot more league players in america and canada, unfortunately not many americans care about league as much due to the console culture and LCS killing off hardcore fans every year due to copious and questionable imports. Though a canada v american region battle could for sure make ppl be interested and create some buzz.

[ionic token]

I agree with you because you need to get fans somewhere and tying them to ones city or neighbourhood or state is an easy way to get at least a couple of people to root for you. In England you can't spit without hitting a village that has a football team dedicated to it, so going local even in LA would be a great way to start it off because you have people with their friends or locals who are more inclined to play for something rather than just to make a name for themselves.

Community events definitely need to be the start, you have to get fans from somewhere and even though league is dying and there's consol culture that doesn't mean that the well has completely dried up

[foggy owl]

Regionality doesn't really need to happen for fans to be invested in teams, it's more just that the orgs themselves are rarely ever marketed + nonexistent parity naturally creates large disparities in fanbases

As mismanaged as it is, OWL has way more stable team fanbases

Not because of regionality but because its ultimately a very team-based league, most of the discourse is centered around teams unlike literally any LoL league that center way more heavily around players

The ATL Reign have been the heels of OWL for like 4 seasons straight even though like most esports, the roster turnover is very high with 4/5 of last year's roster not even being on this year's

As an example

• KC (and KOI and DSG and Gentle M8s for people who follow Valorant) are in general pretty skewed examples because they lean very heavily on the fact the public-facing ownership is a well known streamer/influencer

Perception of orgs as real entities has a way bigger effect than regionality even if there is a lot of overlap; the orgs with no fanbases don't have fans because people literally don't associate anything with the org to begin with

It's a lot worse to be forgettable than to be hated (I.E. why no one cares about IMT regardless of what they do but eat up anything about TSM even if it's just to shit on them)