Siguiendo en la tónica de la noticia del franquiciado en China para 2018, Tencent, propietaria de Riot, junto con algunos socios, ha anunciado la creación de un canal de TV en China para retransmitir contenido relacionado con los eSports.
China's announcement yesterday that the LoL Pro League would shift to a franchising system was surprising if only because it came before any other circuit was willing to openly discuss their summer plans, much less what was to come in 2018. But that was apparently not the only news to come from the Tencent conference. Amid the excitement and controversy about the systemic change in how the circuit operates was the declaration of a whole new Chinese esports TV channel.
There are a handful of implications to this that should keep the professional industry talking in the intervening months. While TV broadcasts of esports events aren't new in China or other eastern hemisphere countries (Korea spearheaded such practices way early on, famously so with OnGameNet), the ownership in question is particularly relevant in light of yesterday's announcement.
The big unspoken question regarding franchising was always the matter of revenue-sharing -- traditionally, as is with baseball, basketball, football, and any other major conventional sport, revenue is shared among all franchised teams, with the majority of it coming from the sales of broadcast rights. But the value of broadcast rights is, in turn, determined by the expected ad revenue sales related to the sport as a media or subscription product. This was infamously so with ESPN, whose shrinking profit margins amid increasing broadcast rights expenses and lowered subscriptions is largely blamed for its recent round of layoffs.
The fact, then, that PerfectWorld, Tencent, and Riot are co-founders of the new channel should pique more than a few industry interests. As the LPL's broadcast rights are retained to its publishers via the new media outlet, it means that Tencent's effectively cutting out the middleman in its pursuit of profitability for the world's biggest esports scene.
It also means they have the ability to profit off of everybody else's esports titles, should their nominal competitors be willing to sell rights to the new channel. At the very least, it now gives them a platform to do so.
There's no telling if such practices will be adopted elsewhere amid the League of Legends esports ecosystem, as media markets and practices can differ vastly from place to place. But the industry side of esports will not be ignoring the actions taking place in the world's largest market.
