Why it’s okay to be a fan of a bad esports team
League of Legends fandom is a game of superiority. Those who win get the fans. Those who lose aren’t deserving.
Outside of Team SoloMid and Fnatic, it’s tough to find Western League of Legends teams with a hardcore, dedicated fan base that will stick around to the very end. Depending on where their favorite players go, fans’ hearts jump from roster to roster.
That’s a bummer. The culture of only rooting for teams that are perceived as having a chance of winning is not only boring, it’s taking away the emotional impact that esports can, and rightfully should, have.
Some backstory: I’m an Oakland A’s fan. The A’s are perpetually underfunded, under-supported, and (in esports terms) underpowered. Every year, I’ll get my hopes up. And every year, they’ll dash them, usually right before the playoffs. They break my heart and generally make me hate baseball with the entirety of my being. But dammit, they’re my team.
Every major sport has historically awful teams with desperately loyal fanbases. Basketball has the Brooklyn Nets. Football has the Cleveland Browns. Soccer has, uh, I’m American and have no idea. Same with hockey.
League of Legends esports doesn’t have that level of fandom. The closest we’ve come is CLG and the keeping of the Faith, but even they have shaken off the chains of the .500 record that plagued them for much of their history. KT Rolster has given up on the idea of building talent from scratch, instead putting together a super team from the best players in the world.
I don’t believe esports should take any and all cues from traditional sports, but sticking with a bad team is definitely one of the things that we should be bringing over.
But why? Why would we want to emotionally invest in a team that’s ultimately going to break our hearts? Why put ourselves through that?
Because it makes competition that much sweeter. While the goal for every team is always to head to Worlds, declaring your loyalty for a team lets you take pleasure in the little things. Did they win a match against a higher-ranked opponent? Celebrate! Did they make the playoffs? Boom, buy yourself a drink. Did your rookie player that no one believed in make a big play? Revel in your team’s scouting brilliance for a moment.
And man, that one year they manage to pull off a miracle run deep into the postseason is downright magical.
Besides, fandom based purely on meritocracy is actively bad for the scene.
Notice how the teams that comprise the top half of most major leagues rarely changes? That’s because of fans. The more fans a team has, the more sponsorship deals they get. The more sponsorship deals they get, the more money they make. The more money they make, the better players they can afford. The result is a stagnant group of teams sitting at the top of the ladder – and a boring scene for anyone who isn’t a TSM/Fnatic/SKT fan.
Given, it’s a bit harder to support a team without the emotional connection of proximity (as it tends to happen in sports), but for the love of esports, let’s give it a shot.
So let’s open it up. Throw down with the Team EnVyUs’ of the world. The BBQ Olivers. The ROCCATs. Support the lesser teams. If you’d prefer not to, don’t deride those who do. Let the bad teams into your heart, and we’ll have a stronger esports scene as a whole.
Taylor Cocke isn’t asking anyone to git gud any time soon. Follow him on Twitter @taylorcocke.
