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What @RLEsports needs to do in order to be sustainable and profitable. A rundown.
As you know, many orgs have left the Rocket league scene temporarily or permanently. With the most notable orgs exiting being G2 and BDS. Both achieving incredibly high and consistent results in the past three years, yet even for them, the sport is not sustainable nor profitable.
Arguably the best organizations (when it comes to results) in their respective regions are exiting the scene. Why? Here's a summary (not ranked in order of importance):
- Player Salaries
- Lack of Support for 3rd party tournament organizers
- Lack of Integration for 3rd party organizers with the main circuit
- Lack of Income Streams for organizations directly coming from the game
- Lack of Income Streams for organizations indirectly coming from the game
- Lack of Sponsorships within the main circuit
- The Open Circuit is too open
- (LAN) Event Frequency
- Season Length
Now the question is how do we make our beloved esport and scene sustainable and profitable?
1 Problems and its possible solutions
Before the beginning of last season BLAST made a last minute deal with Epic Games and from now on they were responsible for the RLCS circuit and not ESL as the players, organizations, company and fans were used to.
1 Format
A new format was introduced: double elimination leading into a swiss stage into a single elimination playoffs. Here's the catch. Every team had to qualify for the top 16 (the swiss stage) even if they did well in previous open qualifier or previous major they would simply not auto qualify to top 16. In my opinion the top 8 of previous event should be auto qualified for next Open Qualifier. The risk of losing is too big, especially when the qualifying games were best of 3, for a big org. This is losing out to potentially thousands of dollars, much needed for organizations who aren't as big as BDS, G2, NRG, Vitality or Karmine Corp.
So I think to auto qualify the top 8 of previous Open Qualifier isn't a bad idea, especially if we want to keep the open circuit
2 Season Length
To add on top of the format, it's safe to say the season format wasn't ideal. Being half the length of what we were used to, with a big break between the last major and worlds, and then a half year long off-season. It is not sustainable nor profitable for orgs to support these teams when the season has such big breaks between seasons and its events especially in an open circuit.
3 Open Circuit
I talked about it for a bit, but the open circuit, I feel like there could be so much more done with that. When you look at Counterstrike there's these multiple LANS spread out all over the year with so many different organizers and so many of these event can count towards a major qualification.
Why is this not the case with the RLCS?
3.1 Open Circuit Proposal
With the season being how it is, the length being how it is and teams not auto qualifying for events if they done well. Here's my all in one solution for that:
Make the season longer again, as we were used to. Make worlds special again and spread out the two majors and its qualification events. In between these majors, there's other events organized by 3rd party organizers but they are supported with both money and resources by Epic Games and BLAST. These events can also count in worlds qualification. This does not mean it's the same points and qualification format as for the Epic Games and BLAST organized majors, but they do count towards worlds qualification. What could be interesting is a Last Chance Qualifier. But what I think is even more interesting is that there are more qualification opportunities given and that not all teams must not play in/ qualify for all these events in order to gain worlds qualification. For the past three seasons, sometimes Worlds felt less special because of the majors and their regional stories. Aside from that this means more LANS for the fans and players, a bigger prize pool for players and orgs and just a lot more exposure for the esport and its orgs.
4 In Game Opportunities
4.1 Decals
Orgs and players weren't happy when decals arrived in the item shop. What is supposed to be a big income stream turned into unhappy fans. Colors and finished weren't properly taken over by the game. The design is vastly different from what is actually in the game which is really unfortunate. Orgs rely on Epic Games to correctly implement this into the game. When this does not happen it means orgs can simply not hit their revenue targets. Not because their team wasn't popular enough, but because the designs weren't properly put into the game. And because Epic Games doesn't do enough to promote the esports decals.
Aside from being able to buy it, The exposure of org decals is important too. There are rumors about Gen.G going to force their players to use their decal when playing, but we all know about placebo.
A simple solution to this would be that the broadcast use bakkesmod and if a team has decals show it for them, this is a big time exposure for orgs.
4.2 Esports Tab and Website
Counterstrike has an excellent esports integration into the game. You can vote who's going to win and get rewards. You can view games and you can see previous matches outcome and their replays. There's just a ton of support. In Rocket League we have a link that goes to the Twitch. As a player who is not engaged yet in the esport, this is not interesting at all. What would be interesting is congratulating the last event winners upon entering the game and clicking on there would immediately lead towards their decals, instead of a 25 dollar bundle we should buy. One is a win win for the company and the orgs, the other one just for the company. Together with the play, profile, item shop and settings options in the main menu, there also should be an esports tab. Being able to not only see live scores, but rankings, players stats, tournaments and their brackets and the ability to vote on who's going to win what. Just as in Counterstrike.
Years ago, an esports website was promised to us, but never came. To this day a fan has to check 2-3 different sources to get a full picture of what's going on with the current game being played, the bracket, the season format and player and match ratings. This would be way nicer than having Twitch + Liquipedia + Shift/Octane open while viewing a game. This could definitely be reduced to Twitch and the Esports website, or even only the esports website.
5 Revenue indirectly from the game
All this nonsense happening directly in the game or immediately in the esport affects orgs big time. Actions of Epic Games and BLAST directly lead to less/more investors. But as the esports high is getting over. Esports Organizations need to be able to sustain themselves in other ways.
There are aforementioned ways to do this and more. But organizations can also cut costs.
5.1 Players
Because of the esports high during 2019-2021, many players salaries have risen a good amount. In fact, you could argue that they are overinflated. Now players don't need to be getting a pay cut, that's unreasonable. But terms of their contracts could be changed:
more prize pool money goes towards organizations. Players must always tweet out when playing in a tournament (official (such as RLCS or related) or non official (Johnny Show Match, Saudi eLeague, etc)) this boosts exposure and thus viewership, which boosts player and team popularity which will inevitably lead to more revenue for an org (merch, decals, player/ team, streams).
5.2 Sponsorships
Simply put: Get more and don't be afraid of betting companies. This might not be the most popular opinion, but Epic should be getting sponsored by betting websites, just like Counterstrike.
Yes it's a kids game, and this should only be put on the broadcast. But major leagues like the NBA or European Soccer are actively being sponsored by sportsbooks too, where kids and teens watch too.
6 Franchising?
At times like this, franchising our ecosystem is something that is definitely an interesting option. Being securer for orgs and players, essentially providing a profitable and sustainable esports ecosystem. Personally, I feel like this would be a bad direction even though at first this definitely seems like the way to go. In a franchised league, I still feel like there's not enough room for new players to grow and set their mark, nor is that the case for new organizations. Dream runs like Team Queso and Moist would be a thing of the past. Upcoming talents would not be fielded as fast as before and would need to wait longer to make their mark. Even though they'd be ready for that.
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Epic Games and BLAST and many other people are putting in a ton of work and we appreciate this, big time. I went to Worlds 2022-2023 in Germany and I had a blast. This wasn't possible without the continuous support the esport has received over the years. But please, you're running it into the ground.
TLDR
Big changes are necessary in order to be a profitable and sustainable esports ecosystem. These are some high level proposals and needs in order to let our esport live on. I know this big tweet is structurally not excellent. While I definitely didn't touch on everything, I feel like this could set a great base that'd be fundamental towards future esport, organization, player and fan growth. Epic Games, Psyonix and BLAST need to take big actions in order to change the ecosystem for the better.
The game of Rocket League is perhaps the most exciting esport of all, being so easy to pick up too. It'd be a shame if this would not grow out to (one of) the largest esport of the 2020 decade.
Thank you for reading this, please, share this with as many people as possible so the message gets through to Epic and BLAST.
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