LOL Season 3 Pro Circuit Has Begun

Being the inaugural LOL ESports posting, I suppose it's only natural to take a moment to justify why a video game belongs in a blog devoted to sports. Starting with facts before I wax poetic, the season 2 championship last year had 8.2 million unique viewers with a widely advertised prize pool of 2 million dollars*. Moreover, LOL is the first game to spread pro-league, salaried circuit gaming outside of Asia. To misquote the effervescent Joe Biden, "this is a big fucking deal" and serves as an interesting case study in seeing the future of ESports outside of Korea. The success Riot has had so far in monetizing it's large--and ever growing--player base in a free-to-play (f2p) game is interesting enough; throw in regular matches between it's top teams in each region and you're living in a geeky fantasy world come to fruition--e.g. living off playing video games and being treated like a sports star

This is very different from the traditional--i.e. last 15 years--pro gamer, who may have steady income from sponsors but relies on tournament winnings to get by. I haven't found or bothered to look for official numbers on salaries, but things like this are enough to indicate the times are a'changing. Not to imply a correlation between the monetization of ESports and a paradigm shift of how pro-gaming is structured, but the season 3 circuit is new in the US and worthy of attention.

*For more info on the S2 championship, look here.

TLDR; watch this video to get better acquainted with S3 and it's relation to the community.

So, as the title suggests...the first season 3 pro circuit matches have officially started today. Here's a link to the match schedule if you want to peep today's results or upcoming matches.



Notes on 2/7/13 results:
-Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) finishing 2-0 is good to see, as they've done a great job reprising the NA dominance they once cherished back in season one.
-TSM going 1-1 and losing to CLG is not surprising, as they've been off point since the season two championship last year.
-I've always considered Curse and Dignitas about the same skill level, so Curse taking the series isn't reflective of much change in the perceived power dynamics of NA team ranking.
-Good to see LCS teams* (GG University and Vulcun) playing more established teams, though the winners of their matches were not surprising.

Overall I'd say the NA season is off to a good start, though the EU circuit seems to have more suspense regarding the outcomes. Whether this is reflective of better dispersion of talented players, the Euro meta that better emphasizes team play, or my comparative lack of familiarity with the EU scene will become more apparent in time.



*League Of Legends Championship Series teams that were not grandfathered into season three from season two, but had to compete for their spots as salaried pro teams.