Esports work best when you leave out the esports players

There is a new trend in esports: if you want a spectator, you simply leave out esports and rely on twitch streamers who play at a high level. In Germany, the NNO broadcast team proves this thesis in League of Legends in 2022, in the USA, the convincing bread in Valorant’s women’s division was a success.

This is the situation in Valorant:

• In the US, Twitch streamer “Disguised Toast” opened an esports team in Valorant and formed a team to change the “Game Changer” project: With the project, Riot Games wants women and members of marginalized groups to get a hand in facilitating esports.
• However, the operator said that he did not have enough money and time for a “real team”, so he did not hire esports athletes, but Twitch players who play with ambition.
• This is why one woman criticized him on Twitter, saying women esports should be given a chance. Having Twitch Streamers on the team is like a slap in the face to all of the esports players in Valorant. His behavior was “disrespectful”.

An upset Toast reacted very emotionally to this criticism. This would exclude people. Sign only the right esports players. Criticism is not okay.

But you could tell he took the criticism seriously and admitted that the team was more about getting attention than winning matches and trophies.

A team of Twitch Streamers ensures that the Valorant spectator thrives

This is the turning point: The Disguised Toast Twitch Streamers are now competing in their first tournament, and there’s already the desired outcome: the number of viewers in the tournament has tripled, as one user wrote:

• Last year’s games saw about 8,500 spectators at their peak.
• Now there are already 24,000.
• 100,000 viewers reached across all channels combined, says one of the team players.

Apparently, Disguised Toast has achieved its goal of paying more attention to the “Game Changer” project.

In German LoL, a team from Twitch set viewership records

What about lol? Here in Germany, we’ve observed exactly the same phenomenon among men in 2022:

• In LoL’s second Bundesliga, a team consisting solely of Twitch streamers competed. Among them was NoWay4U, one of the biggest Twitch streamers of all time.
• Many on the team used to be LoL professionals, but ended their careers in favor of streams at an advanced age – but it was still enough for the second league.
• In the end, their strength had far more spectators than the best matches in League One. NNO games have reached 100,000 spectators. The number of matches in the first league was about 30,000. Again, the number of banners was three times greater.

Content creators discover turbulent esports and are attracting a lot of attention

That’s why this is so important: E-sports is currently suffering. Many teams have to cut spending or even close their businesses altogether.

But you can see that projects from popular Twitch streamers are bringing in the same amount of viewership and attention that esports teams desperately want.

Successful esports teams have known this for a long time and work closely with creators: large organizations FaZe or 100 Thieves specialize in strengthening their brands through YouTube and Twitch creators and selling fashion products, for example vending.

In Germany, YouTuber ‘HandofBlood’ founded his own LoL team. In France and Spain, popular content creators have done the same.

This has breathed new power into the scene in all three countries and has ensured a growing social media presence.

This may be somewhat negative for the “competitive side” of esports, but there’s clearly no way around content creators to achieve commercial success.

LOL: Esports are dying in the USA – Twice Champion allegedly sells out the team and shoots everyone