VLR Tier 2 Takes

When talking about tier 2 scene VLR in general often miss the forest for the trees. People are missing the bigger picture

People always complain about how dead the tier 2 scene is, but I've rarely seen people talk about how cloutless the tier 2 scene is. You might have the best tier 2 scene in the world, but that just means you're losing more money to accomodate orgs' needs. That's how you lose the scene faster. Lofty ideals with no returns.

What riot should focus more isn't how to improve tier 2, save that for when you've gathered enough capital or enough viewers to sustain that. Riot should find ways to gather viewers, especially on how to get Tier 1 watchers to watch tier 2. There's little riot can do when even majority of VLR, a site about valorant esports barely watches them.

Also clouted region attracts existing local big orgs, big orgs pay good wages and good wages attracts better talents.

True but it's easier to blame riot than watch tier 2

The problem is deeper than what most people understand. Valorant is a truly global game which touched countries which have never before been in PC esports. Riot artificially tried to create 2 Tiers in a game where there's absolutely no scope for it unlike traditional sports. Traditional sports are far-reaching with most teams representing local cities where everybody has a special connect to their own city nd turn up to stadiums to watch their locals play while also having an absolute favorite like Barca nd Madrid in football.
Meanwhile in Valorant teams generally represent whole country and when your country has a team playing in VCT they take up the role of both local and international fav suffocating other teams. Any Tier 2 team having a fanbase is either due to a player/coach/creator who is well known or due to the fact that they represent a country not represented in VCT like Vietnam nd Mongolia.
TLDR there's no way to build any fanbase in Tier 2 valorant which I will touch upon in one more way .

Second point Riot is definitely responsible and majorly responsible for what's happening to T2. In pre-franchising era a local league had lot more value attached to the matches than what it has today. Since Riot didn't put all their money in sustaining an artificial Tier 1 they actually promoted local leagues which mean more eyeballs. Furthermore with plethora of orgs present fans were willing to divide nd choose amongst their own country teams cheering with a hope that their fav team will make it to regional qualifiers nd represent the country. The classical GE vs VLT which saw insane hype creation and breach of over 70k peak viewership for a local match was result of this . It's a big delusion that people only watch VCT bcz they want to be entertained by highest quality valorant and they won't watch Tier 2 a low quality game as a result. 99% of watchers are much worse than any pro player in game nd they have no understanding of what even is high quality valorant. They watch whatever is sold to them . If this wasn't the case we would not frequently have seen pros like Boaster watching VLT vs GE when India played one of the lowest level of valorant pre-franchising. But Riot giving them official relegation to regional valorant outside 12 hand-picked teams and zero promotion means they are not worth watching for majority playerbase.
Add it to the fact that pre-franchising every official match mattered just like it does even now for VCT teams. But in this system for Tier 2 Split 1 has no value, Split 3 has no value the only matches that matter are split 2 which also send you to Ascension a much lower quality event than Masters or Champions which means it's almost immpossible for a casual viewer to support only their own Tier 2 team or even watch their Split 1 nd 3 matches as they would rather watch a VCT match that matters.
At bare minimum Riot could have added Tier 2 matches to in-game esports tab which would give it good reach atleast but they are incapable of doing even that much for reasons best known to them.

I would also like to counter a very common point which is always thrown around both in reddit nd here that pre-franchising so many orgs invested only in the hope of getting into franchise and they left naturally when they didn't make it. This take implies that no org would hv entered Valorant if Riot had not promised them franchising. I have a very simple retort to this and I would love to debate but do you all seriously believe that 30+ org that invested in NA seriously believed in their head that they have chance of being 1 of the 6 NA team that would be chosen. Orgs like Xset nd Ghost gaming had zero chance of making it over bigger , older ,richer and more clouted orgs in NA yet they created successful teams and Xset went international . Do you guys seriously think that 15 orgs investing in a country like India believed that they would be that 1 chosen one who will go to franchise. Heck orgs like RGE, TR ,Engima didnt even had a structure that would let them reach anywhere close to franchising and similarly i can give countless examples from multiple countries but point is same not everyone was in it for Franchising as people like to claim. Franchising was a competition between some 100 odd orgs organisation for 40 spots while Valorant had over 300 active orgs thriving pre-franchise bcz the ultimate dream of making champions and getting that bundle money changed fates of many org. PRX and Sentinels are what they are today simple due to success in Valorant. And if nothing else Valorant gave everyone enough viewership that they can fetch sponsors nd support their teams which unfortunately isnt possible anymore for Tier 2 teams. I mean you think if I am owner of a company I dont hv any reason to sponsor a team playing in a league with 500 avg viewer. Either i invest in league with 150k avg viewer or I simply dont unless I am a betting company which has throwaway money which also will only be allowed to VCT teams btw

It's simple. Riot doesn't advertise tier 2 at all. It's not dead at all. Just nobody cares.

Valorant launched just as the esports bubble burst, and we are seeing its long-term effects. The thing is, unless you are having gambling money involved like in CS, only the publisher (in Valo's case, Riot/Tencent) could fund the pro-scene. It has been re-iterated countless times that Riot never made any money out of LoL esports outside of China. Though they've still invested in it due to the intangibles, ie promoting their product. LoL esports did this quite successfully, since LoL esports is one of the biggest reason the game is still pretty healthy in terms of player counts and interest. It has therefore been a good ROI, despite LoL esports losing money for Riot on paper. Even so, Riot had to merge several regions to create LTA and APAC league this year.

Now, talking about Valo, again, unless Riot wants to allow CS-style open circuit with external TOs hosting tournaments with gambling sponsorship money, they have to bear the whole expenditure of maintaining the esports scene. Funny thing is, at the beginning of Valo, Riot mentioned that they are planning to structure Valorant esports unlike that of LoL but closer to that of CS : 3rd party TOs, lot of different international LANs, etc. For some reason, they've altered their plans and now here we are, with VCT as we know today.

So from Riot's point of view, everything revolves around the ROI, ie how much marketing the pro-scene does for Valo. Riot recoups the investment they've made on the esports scene by added interests of viewers that leads to more play-time and money spent in-game. Players and watchers of VCT all shit on Riot for creating the franchised system and ruining the national/regional leagues as a result, but Riot must've done some calculations before jumping to the franchised structure. Especially, what'd matter is how much ROI they'll be able to get from key markets, that is the Chinese market and the Western market. It is very plausible that the ROI of creating and maintaining 4 international leagues is much better than maintaining every single individual national T1 leagues, as it has been pre-franchise.

I think that Riot couldn't care less about T2. Had it been possible, I think that they wanted to replicate the success of the European LoL esports scene, where both the LEC and ERL/EM were very popular. This obviously hasn't worked in Valo, but at least from the viewership standpoint, I think T1 has worked out well for Riot.

Now, where the actual issue lies is the emerging market, ie SEA and South Asia. And sorry to break it to you, SEA fans, but emerging markets are not the priority markets for most game devs/publishers. Unless you could pull numbers similar to that of mobile games like MLBB or PUBG mobile, the ROI from emerging market is never going to be good, and that's the problem. Valo is a PC game, and it is never going to be as accessible as mobile games in the emerging markets. From the average wage/spending power standpoint, your average player in the emerging markets is no different from a kid living in a Western country who has to rely on his pocket money that he got from his parents to buy a Paysafe card. Most of the times, currency of emerging markets are equally weak, so for Western publishers who operates on dollars, there's even less incentive to spend the resource they could've otherwise spend on the Western or Chinese market. This is very apparent from the fact that SEA was the only region where an external publisher (Garena) was granted publishing rights for League, apart from China.

It's the same reason why all the outrage concerning the T2 SEA League and SOOP exclusive streaming rights made no sense in the first place (I've seen some SEA fans claiming that Riot is conspiring to make SEA weaker, in order to cement Korean dominance in APAC because Jake Shin is Korean and they have favoritism towards Korea. Bro what?) It's understandable that SEA fans are emotionally shook, but like I've said, there's no money to be made in SEA. Like, when you see that news, the first question that should come to your mind is how bad the ROI should be, that Riot is virtually axing the T2 esports scene of the entire region by handing over the tournament organizing rights to a platform no one fucking uses, and is full of bugs that you never want to watch anything again on said platform. If you really think that Jake could singlehandedly decide what he wants to do with an entire damn region with multiple national leagues, and it's streaming rights, there's no need to talk further. I've seen people mentioning viewership numbers of around 30~70k concerning the national leagues before the downfall, but the thing is, that's still not enough. You'll need numbers rivaling VCJ if you really want to convince Riot that they should keep on investing to keep the respective T2 scene healthy.

The biggest problem with investing in the emerging market as a game publisher is the fact that video games doesn't work like physical goods. In case of physical goods like electronic devices or cars/motorcycles, clothes and so forth, branding matters, and it makes sense to invest to promote your brand with 10 years down the line in mind. That doesn't work for video games. How high are the chances that your 10 year old game will be gaining active players, finding new markets? Video game players move on fast, and you can't invest in emerging markets expecting immediate gains. Simply put, it's very understandable from financial standpoint as to why Riot is backing out of SEA esports.

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