Steven Roberts.

President of the ESL Esports League.

He skimmed the contents of the contract that Riot had brought him, a look of disdain.

Across from his desk, a man in a black suit sat with some trepidation.

Steven Roberts, a pioneer of the concept of e-sports, has a high position in the e-sports industry, and now, as the chairman of ESL, the organizer of the famous e-sports league, he has often been asked to make predictions about the esports market, and many e-sports projects are very eager to cooperate with ESL.

"70 percent, I can only accept 70 percent." Steven Roberts drew a circle of the requirements on the contract, "ESL has to get 70% of the share in this cooperation. ”

Game companies and platforms that hold events have a revenue share, and some relatively large game companies have high requirements for sharing.

Splits like Dota 2 and ESL are split fifty-fifty.

The game company's predecessor takes 50% of the profit from this competition, and ESL, as the organizer of the event, shares another 50% of the profits, including tickets... Sponsorship... and other profitable projects, all of which are among them.

But ESL was upset with Riot.

Naturally, it won't make Riot so comfortable.

This brings us to the little brother of the ESL Electronic Alliance... IEM too.

Riot recently withdrew the license to compete in the IEM competition.

It was said that the IEM tournament was in conflict with the schedule he held, so he didn't want IEM to continue the tournament, but in fact there were a lot of conflicts of interest, and there were more special circumstances in the last IEM tournament, which seemed to be informal, which annoyed Riot, so he took away the IEM competition rights.

In addition, the conflict between IEM and continental competitions is also a major problem.

Riot was afraid that these matches would be too flooded and affect its normal official schedule.

For example, in the IEM tournament, Western players were either traded or on vacation during the offseason, while China and South Korea had their own tournaments and the teams were locked out.

In addition, League of Legends players are very troublesome when changing formations.

In other e-sports sports, when players change formations but encounter a match, they usually borrow a foreign player to help.

This foreign aid can be a member of the domestic team, or a member of a foreign team, as long as the player agrees, he can come to replace the game for a while and survive this vacuum period, of course, this is not a free help, the substitute player can also receive the salary provided by the team, which is considered to be a two-time job.

There is also the player who has been traded, who voluntarily helps the team through this vacuum period, and continues to stay in the team to help play until the player who replaces or changes the team arrives and then leaves the team.

It's a form of professionalism.

However, here at Riot, neither situation is allowed, that is to say, the lineup has changed, and the departing players cannot continue to play the subsequent fixtures on a voluntary basis, nor can they borrow foreign players to help play, so they can only go to the bench or let the newly bought players play.

This kind of regulation also makes other platforms encounter greater resistance to holding events.

And if you want to find a time period where both the Eastern and Western regions have time and can play, then you have to clash with the continental tournaments, mid-season tournaments, and S series held by Riot, and if you don't have these conflicts, you have to conflict with the regular season, so it is also very troublesome to find time.

"Yes." The man in the suit took out a brand new contract from his briefcase, and it seemed that Fist had prepared in advance.

Riot probably also understands in his heart and gives ESL authorization, but it is relatively difficult for ESL to run a good game, and the profit given is naturally higher and better.

Steven Roberts was a little surprised, he re-looked at the new contract, the share in it, ESL got a high pay boost, but his face was calm, Riot gave such a price, the tournament must not be as easy to organize as Dota 2 and CSGO tournaments.

Sure enough.

The requirement of Riot's new contract is that League of Legends tournaments hosted by ESL cannot be held offline until the Final Four.

Other words... The group stage and the quarterfinals are all played online, that is, on the international server of League of Legends.

As a result, ESL can earn a lot less money offline all of a sudden.

However, the semi-finals are played offline, which is also easy for ESL to allocate schedules that are not prone to conflicts.

Steven Roberts closed the contract and said, "We'll look into it and give you an answer later." ”

Very official.

After all, Riot is not a good condition, and the relationship between the two sides is not harmonious, and it is possible for ESL to release pigeons, but I didn't expect that a few days later, ESL agreed to Riot's request and began to prepare for the ESL Elite Cologne series League of Legends World Series.

ESL does look down on Fist, but looking down on Fist and looking down on money are two different things.

And compared to fists, it is the kind of qualification that needs to be killed step by step.

The ESL Elite Cologne series of League of Legends tournaments has opted for a direct invitation system.

The meaning of direct invitation, as the name suggests, is to invite the world's most powerful League of Legends team according to the team's fame and strength intensity, compared to the S series and mid-season tournaments are to be killed, this kind of direct invitation is often staged in a performance situation, or use the team's fame to pull sponsorship.

It is to invite those big-name teams to play.

It's easy for a lot of big-name teams not to take this kind of invitation-to-heart game to heart.

Fortunately, the League of Legends World Series itself is small, and this kind of direct invitation is relatively golden, even if some big-name teams don't look down on this kind of game, other small teams in the league are still looking forward to this game.

Direct invitations to the ESL were quickly passed on to teams in each region.

The LPL divisions are RNG Team, R Team, and Snake Team.

The LCK divisions are KT Team, KZ Team, and KSV Team.

The LMS divisions are Team JT, Team F, and Team AHQ.

The European division is G2, Fnatic, and Unicorn.

The North American region is TSM, C9, and Team-Liquid.

The Wild Card Zone has only invited one team, Team GAM, and one team from Vietnam.

The top 16 places are basically determined by direct invitation.

It stands to reason that the LPL division should invite the EDG team, but I don't know if ESL did it deliberately or intentionally, maybe it was to be angry with IEM, so I simply didn't invite the EDG team directly, and I didn't even mention it.

It is worth mentioning.

After thinking about it, Team R agreed with ESL in advance not to participate in this game.

This level of competition is very powerful.

Considering that the preparation of this competition was a little hasty, and worried that the game would not be well organized and there would be accidents, Team R did not agree in order to ensure the state of the regular season and better prepare for the playoffs, and Team R did not agree to this competition.

ESL directly invited the IG team, but still didn't take care of the EDG team.

It can be said that it is very grudgeful.

The last time I held a grudge, I was still working against the V Society.

At that time, the V club gave the Major competition to other platforms, and ESL took the initiative to ask for help, but the V club just didn't let him hold another session, which made ESL very angry, so in ESL's own game, several players who were permanently banned were invited to play small competitions held by ESL, which made V club disgusting enough.

It is very likely that EDG is on ESL's blacklist.

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