In League of Legends e-sports, the top professional league, the LEC, dominated the action in Europe for years. But in 2022, the “regional leagues” are making news. Here in Germany, people are suddenly talking about the Prime League with YouTuber HandofBlood’s team “Eintracht Spandau.” But this is not an isolated case: In France and Spain, very similar projects are underway and driving the new regional leagues.

That’s how it’s been for years:

• For many years, LoL consisted mainly of the 4 major professional leagues: the LCK and LPL in Asia, the LCS in North America, and the LEC here at home. In the LEC, German teams like Schalke or SK Gaming played in the midfield, while the top teams G2 and Fnatic fought out the championships among themselves. At the World Championship, however, a team from Asia won anyway.
• There were also other foreign leagues and smaller regional leagues, but few were really interested in them. Among others, junior teams of the professional organizations played there.
• Everything below the 1st league seemed confusing and chaotic. It apparently did not have the necessary “value” and paled against the first leagues. The environment was apparently not really attractive to sponsors either – corporations preferred to chase their money into the “big teams.”

 

Riot restructures European regional leagues in October

What has changed? October 2021 Riot Games announced an initiative to upgrade the “European regional leagues”.

Essentially, they went down to 5 “recognized” leagues:

• the Super League in Spain
• the LA Ligue Franicse (LFL) in France
• the Prime League for Germany, Austria and Switzerland
• the Ultraliga for Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
• the “Northern League of Legends Championship” for Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland

These leagues Riot Games wanted to support more, coordinate, promote, match them with sponsors and create a better environment.

The upgrade apparently had a clear goal: to make the leagues more attractive to teams and to investors, to generate more viewers, to promote them more and to involve them more (via LoLesports). The leagues were to become more relevant, not only providing the underpinnings for the professional league where junior teams play, but they were to be able to function on their own.

Superstar Rekkles goes to the 2nd league.

3 “super teams” with YouTubers, Twitch streamers and soccer stars emerge.

What is the stroke of luck? The exciting thing is that three large and prominent teams have emerged in Spain, France and Germany within a few months. Apparently also because this environment now fits better:

• Here in Germany, popular YouTuber HandofBlood founded the team “Eintracht Spandau” in 2021, which dominated the Prime League in 2022 and is currently in first place.
• In France, the team “Karmine Corp” was created by two Twitch streamers in November 2020. They got “Rekkles”, a legendary star of the LEC for 2022, and are currently ranked 2nd in France.
• In Spain, one of the biggest Twitch streamers in the world, Ibai (9.6 million followers Twitch) together with soccer star Gerard Pique created Team KOI in December 2021: They are ranked 3rd in Spain.

Suddenly the regional leagues in LoL have a lot of reach

What’s so special about that? These 3 teams are all “crowd pleasers” who push their leagues extremely hard and generate attention.

• Team KOI already has 450,000 followers on Twitter in Spain – and that’s for a second division team. The league’s average viewership has increased by 50% on Twitch.
• Karmine Corp. is such a bringer in France that LFL broadcasts have exploded. The French league is currently considered the big winner in LoL. “OtpLoL_”, the French channel on Twitch, has increased its viewed hours by 384% compared to last year.
• And HandofBlood is also enormously successful in Germany with his project “Eintracht Spandau”. The YouTube video “I’m creating an e-sports team” has over 925,000 views. Prime League viewership has increased by 20%.

Star influencers return to their roots

How did this happen? All 3 Influencers behind their teams started their careers with League of Legends. HandofBlood and Ibai have then become huge influencers in their countries over the years and have now apparently seen the opportunity to return to their roots under the new conditions.

The advantage is that they now have the resources and reach to raise “their” LoL teams big time.

HandofBlood, for example, is directly seeking “proximity” on the ground and wants to establish a connection from his team to the fans.

While the professional teams of the LEC often seem far away and as if they do not belong to a country at all, but are “European teams” through and through, the new teams and regional leagues now have much more of a local flair.

This is an amazing sign that even such an established e-sport as League of Legends can still set new accents and attract target groups in 2022. It will be interesting to see how the concept develops over the next few years, as the “new” teams are obviously pushing their way into the 1st division.

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