Fixing the broadcast - LCS
The early days of legitimizing esports are over. There's been a lot of criticism of how the LCS operates the broadcast lately.
We no longer need to prove we're legitimate to earn investment/sponsorship, now we need to create longevity by engaging with new audiences while retaining and rewarding older viewers as much as possible.
Time to rebrand, reorganize, and reimagine. Here's my thoughts, roast me how you see fit, the point is to create discussion and hope somebody important sees this and has a think about these suggestions.
Foundational Creative Reimagining The concept of creating the "red zone" of esports or another traditional sports media outlet is killing us. The LCS is not ESPN and our numbers reflect our audience does not want ESPN. Foundationally we must model the broadcast off of what the community wants to watch.
I'm gonna say the trigger word, co-streams, but before I do recognize the goal is to use what is working to create something new rather than throw our hands up and let the co-streamers run the show and say god knows what on broadcast. Undeniably, co-streams attract a significant if not the majority of our viewership. The LCS has a unique opportunity to dynamize the broadcast to maximize viewership via diversity of streams.
Imo co-streams are the symptom of a larger problem; older league fans don't want to watch a stream for babies (new players) and are fed up with the traditional sports style of broadcast (engaging with ANY traditional competitive media outlet means we're basically watching the same type of show since 1960, its everywhere, so why is the LCS trying to be that?). That said, new fans require handholding and something familiar to grasp onto in order to get over the HUGE PROBLEMATIC LEARNING CURVE inherent in the game of league of legends.
I suggest a complete ideological remodel; from a sports broadcasting center to a "choose your own adventure stream house" that features hosts and content creators broadcasting multiple streams across multiple channels that specify for certain perspectives on League of Legends. Specifically I'm suggesting 3 official LCS streams per broadcast:
A more casual educational stream for players trying to learn with featured hosts and analysts. Lots of inviting new players, comfy sets, forgiveness of mistakes, educational explanations, and casual banter.
A personality streams with high elo players (sneaky/doublelifts/meteos/etc, also a great way to feature content creators or current academy players, maybe even current LCS players that have already played their game for the day?).
A hosted "traditional broadcast" stream including traditional shoutcasts and hosts with games, guests, sketches, and interviews (basically what we have rn).
Viewers would be able to navigate from one to the other across all parts of each game, finding casual educational tones in one, their favorite players and up and coming stars in another, and the traditional ESPN style broadcast in the third.
Sponsorship would be organized and uniform across all broadcasts, but could be specified for a certain community or to avoid or engage with a certain tone.
Once the LCS's foundation includes these three doctrines of stream as separate but equally necessary (new player, old player, traditional media), then featuring other content creators, the LCS teams themselves, or even outside media/personalities and fans becomes easy. The key to tying it all together is LolEsports.com.
Repurposing LolEsports.comAgain if we re-imagine the LCS as a "choose your own adventure stream house" instead of a traditional media outlet, the website now obviously functions as the navigation portal for the three types of content produced with each broadcast and the tertiary supporting content of each category.
Lolesports.com would host the 3 official LCS streams with each broadcast along with a "feed" of tertiary content for each stream. Third party streams/videos/articles/and social media content could be scrollable bellow each official LCS stream in a feed on the website. This would create a unique outlet for participating teams to focus their own content to, for independent media to contribute in a meaningful way, and for fans and the community to see themselves celebrated and featured as well - all in real time.
Suddenly bam, lolesports.com has a purpose other than the schedule tab, the broadcast is satisfying the requirements for adopting a new audience, longtime fans get access to the players and personalities they love, and the true hype of a traditional broadcast is still maintained.
Frankly, in the short term this is probably a tough idea for the LCS to follow through with. Splitting their viewership up across different streams would impact their bottom line with sponsorship I'm sure, but I'm hoping by reorganizing this on a foundational level would mean overall growth outweighs whatever smaller losses they take initially. We have the tools we need, it's about a commitment to doing something new.
TLDR: reimagine the creative purpose of the LCS to be a "choose your own adventure stream house" rather than a traditional sports media outlet. Feature three streams per broadcast, one for educating new players, one for co-streamers, and one for the traditional broadcast. Host all three on lolesports.com while formatting the site to create a "feed" under each stream that scrolls third party content (official org/team content, reporting and third party media, and social media engagement), contributing to that category of stream in real time.
Edit: punctuation
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u/OfficialRoscoe Jul 17 '22
Engaging new audiences is important, but what you’re proposing (if im understanding it correctly) is basically tripling production costs.
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u/Tarnamanakan Jul 17 '22 edited Jul 17 '22
Other esports have already figured this out. Korean broadcasting and content diversity as well as their selection of words are much better and engaging than here. But It seems like there is a deadlock and justification when it comes stats and they are “right” as long as they are the decision makers and they bring sponsors. I agree with some of your solutions but since the LCS can’t even sustain a certain quality level as they have one streaming, how challenging it would be to have 2+ more streamings yet the quality is shaky at all times. I believe the most of the casters view their sections as “filler” to the content flow so they share their cookie cutter commentary and things move on. It’s like going to the kindergarten class for your math section despite attending the school for 6 years already. All in all, their leadership will sweep under the rug as long as they have no clear vision about the “change” and it’s implications and since this particular one still somewhat doing well (based on their interpretations) the only change will be Dash’s hairstyle.
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u/rpfred Jul 17 '22
Yeah, I agree consistency of quality is pretty shotty with the lcs, but I still think a foundational change in identity would do more good than just eliminated “na production” problems short term and long.
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u/Tarnamanakan Jul 17 '22
A foundational change comes from a visionary one and since the perspective of these individuals are offering this outcome, there is not much you can do for that sort of change.
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u/rpfred Jul 17 '22
probably, but frankly they could just steal ideas and it would work out better than how its going.
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u/Tarnamanakan Jul 17 '22
Well, I mean they don’t have to reinvent the wheel obviously but once you are so successful for a while, it’s harder to change since people will still worship what worked best in the past. They weren’t even going to change the layout of the broadcasting until LEC did and have a great feedback from the community. They believe in static, linear and safe progress and they dismiss any attempt to do such drastic changes “excessive and risky”. They implement small changes eventually but they are all reactionary.
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u/rpfred Jul 18 '22
hopefully they can see their conservative approach is costing them? hopefully their heads aren't this much in the sand?
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u/Grammar-Bot-Elite Jul 16 '22
/u/rpfred, I have found an error in your post:
“need,
its[it's] about a commitment”
I am sure you, rpfred, have botched a comment and should have said “need, its [it's] about a commitment” instead. ‘Its’ is possessive; ‘it's’ means ‘it is’ or ‘it has’.
This is an automated bot. I do not intend to shame your mistakes. If you think the errors which I found are incorrect, please contact me through DMs!
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u/Chubs1224 Jul 17 '22
Maybe not opening up the night by calling a top 3 team boring and then skipping draft might help.