Recently, the LCS team FlyQuest became a hot topic of debate among League of Legends esports fans on the internet.
The North American professional LoL team posted a video on their YouTube channel talking about the competitive scene and its dependency on co-streaming, which in turn threw unwanted shade towards content creator and retired League pro, Caedrel.
The video, which has changed its title multiple times (currently titled: Did Content Creators Bankrupt Esports?), talked about what role content creators play in the growth of esports broadcasting and how the Western scene is in decline.
This video did rounds on the internet, as fans on multiple social platforms shared it and debated whether the rise of co-streaming in esports was apt or not.
Content Creators Are (Not) Saving Esports
While the video was successful in sparking an intense debate among the communities, it also did some damage as it featured Caedrel’s picture as its thumbnail. This led to multiple fans marching towards the content creator and hating.
The situation became so critical that Marc Lamont, aka Caedrel, had to leave mid-stream during his co-stream of the LEC series between Shifters and G2 Esports.
During the stream, the retired League pro faced an onslaught of negative comments, which made him announce on the chat multiple times that the streaming atmosphere had become negative and downright “cancer”. He also said that due to this negativity, he will get ragebaited or tilted, which will only lead to “bad content and bad commentary.”
After writing the message, Caedrel left the stream. This move made the debate even more heated because during the G2 vs Shifter series, Caedrel had a live audience of around 33,000 on his stream, and the official LEC English broadcasts only pulled 20k on YouTube and Twitch combined.
However, the moment Caedrel’s stream went offline, the official broadcast skyrocketed to 44k combined.
This made the concerns regarding co-streaming during esports broadcasts more prominent as fans started pointing fingers at co-streamers for the low growth of League of Legends esports broadcasts in the West.
While eastern titles like MLBB pull massive viewership and dominate the charts, the dwindling interest of League esports in the West only makes things harder for everyone who is associated or dependent on the growth of the industry.
However, how much the content creators or the co-streamers are responsible for the growth or the stagnation of the Western LoL esports scene is still to be decided.
Featured image credit: Red Bull
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