LCK teams request changes for sustainability of the League
Today, the 10 franchise teams playing the LCK League have congregated and made a public statement addressing LCK management in order to request changes for the sustainability of the league.
The Concerns of the LCK Teams:
With the 2020 LCK launch, Riot Games presented the teams with a vision of “World’s Greatest Global Esports League” to the franchised teams.
The organization has made continued efforts and investments to get their respective players and teams to greater heights. A result of efforts being LCK teams winning three out of the four Worlds since 2020.
The LCK has also garnered a huge increment in the viewership, performance and fandom. The increase in the interactions signs an increase in retention of users, sales and business growth for League of Legends.
But according to the teams, the profit distribution has grown negatively. The profit distribution to the money distributed amongst the stakeholders of a business.
In the case of LCK, Riot and the 10 franchise teams form 11 stakeholders that invest money into the tournament and after every year share the profit amongst themselves.
The teams claim that despite the increasing user retention, LCK has never received its sales goal since the last three years, the distribution paid is also significantly lower than the other leagues.
Additionally, the teams are also concerned about Riot’s reduced interest in League of legends and LCK while favoring other esports.
These concerns stem from multiple situations; delays in providing competitive servers, frequent errors and crashes in the game clients, multiple LCK personnel leaving for other departments and sports leading to delay or stoppage in the growth of the league.
Why the Public Statement?
The aforementioned problems have led to multiple sustainability issues for the organizations. It is not possible for them to continue investing in the LCK and support players. They also think LCK and Riot are not resolving fundamental issues and that is leading to stunted growth.
They have been requesting changes on various occasions but the situation hasn’t been resolved yet. Moreover, Riot warned the teams about a possible disciplinary action. The Riot's stand on the situation led the them to believe "teams are only forced to take responsibility as members of the LCK, and they do not receive any rights or the fruits of labour." Hence, they decided to publicize the structural problems and difficulties of the league.
All the franchised teams are in favor of the joint motion to bring about Riot’s attention but did not participate because of the difference in procedure and methods.
The Proposed Resolution
The organizations do want to continue investing in LCK and realize the “Greatest Esports League” dream and are requesting an open dialogue from the relevant Riot and LCK personnel including the LCK Commissioner.
The organizations have put forth 5 questions and requested Riot and the LCK personnel to start with answering the questions.
The 5 questions put forth by the franchised organizations are:
- Expanding investment in dedicated LCK personnel and sharing the commissioner’s right of confidence
- Improvement of the league business structure, including sales distribution
- Solving the problem of the number of LCK games per year, which is significantly lower than that of other professional sports.
- Resolving in-game functional issues to improve the training environment
- Planning and execution of a scalable business model linked to LOL IP
Concluding their statement the teams talk about the increasing difficulty in maintaining the ecosystem and requested Riot to discuss with the teams.
“The LCK has been called “The World’s Most Successful Esports League.” But behind the scenes, the raison d'être (reason to exist) of the 10 teams is under threat. In order to maintain the ecosystem of the LCK, we hope that the LCK league and Riot can understand the difficulties faced by teams that are members and partners of the league and have sincere discussions with the teams.”
Sustainability Issues with Esports
Over the past year, multiple esports organizations have been struggling with sustainability. The exponential growth in the esports scene led to increased player salaries and cost to operate the teams.
Within Riot’s sphere of gaming itself, Valorant Challenger Leagues, NA’s LCS, LEC and multiple other leagues and organizations have suffered with the struggling market.
These concerning and troubling times have to be carefully treaded by all the stakeholders in esports. With LCK teams taking a stance, it'd be a step in the right direction.
Featured Image Credits: LCK // Riot Games
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