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Comment by mb22 | Hacker News Reader

There is way less team loyalty. Teams are not geographical, so no physical attachment. Teams change players too much for me to become a fan and buy their merch.

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> Teams are not geographical

Some teams are geographical. For example: Overwatch league.

> There is way less team loyalty.

My only real experience is with Dota. There is a lot of nationalist sentiment in tournaments, but you're right - most people follow players, not teams.

In Dota, in particular, Valve has tried to make changes to encourage team stability, but the fundamental problem is that pay is so heavily stacked towards winning a few top tier tournaments per year, that people become very mercenary.

I think the big challenge is that it really doesn't cost very much money to run an esports tournament. There is no need for an expensive stadium (except to sell tickets to fans). Basically anyone can create the new premiere tournament by just paying a bit of money to organize the thing and have a prize pool bigger than the current biggest prize pool.

This really cuts into the power that a franchise model could potentially have - they'd have much less power to control the sport in the way that the NBA controls basketball or the NFL controls football.

> In Dota, in particular, Valve has tried to make changes to encourage team stability, but the fundamental problem is that pay is so heavily stacked towards winning a few top tier tournaments per year, that people become very mercenary.

And ironically, Valve is the organization that created this problem.

Similarly, my only real experience following is Dota - I blame my teenage years in War3 mods with that fascination.

Aside from the payout & incentive structure for players, the game is very much dependent on aligning player skillsets, heroes in the meta, and player attitudes/communication styles -- So much so, that some teams thrive some years, and completely disintegrate the next.

Plenty of examples of teams feeling they're being brought down by 'those one/two players', while they keep the "streaming stars" for the player fan base.

> Some teams are geographical. For example: Overwatch league.

Haven't checked the latest status, but I understood before that didn't really work out.

> Some teams are geographical. For example: Overwatch league.

OWL never made it to a full home-and-away season; they planned one in 2020 but never executed it. Are there any esports leagues that play in home-city venues?

Dota Esports started as kind of region based there was a big rivalry between Chinese and Western teams it was always hype when one of the top Chinese teams like IG, LGD or DK etc would get invited to a Western tournament and vice versa the metagames across the region were different with each region prioritizing a different play style.

I'm pretty sure The qualifiers for TI (largest Dota tournament) are still region based. But nowadays the scenes have become much more homogenized. For a while the winners of TI would flip back and fourth (West would win one year then China and so fourth) it was a really good story to follow.

I think it started to change after TI 4 you began to get "Super Teams" which would just stack the best players on a single team, you tended to get very volatile rosters and team stability was basically non existent. Teams would form for one tournament then break up almost immediately afterwards. As a result you tended to follow players you liked rather than the teams.

Agreed, it seems odd to be a fan of a team when they aren't "your" team, as in you can go and actually see them on a regular basis.

Racing and golf are examples of successful sports that don't have geographic ties, and they're both mostly individual-driven. Racing has teams, but nobody really cares about them.

> Racing has teams, but nobody really cares about them

Italians and Ferrari would strongly disagree with you

Yeah, people not caring about the teams is really just applicable to NASCAR in my experience.

On the one hand, yeah. On the other, I know many Germans became Ferrari fans while they had Michael Schumacher.

I’m assuming by ‘racing’ you mean motor racing.

‘Nobody’ cares about racing teams?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifosi

Maybe we will see national eSports teams if the fan base blows up over the years. But as for the existing teams, they're more like soccer clubs, and shouldn't be restricted by region, it allows money to be invested to bring in the best players, which is a good incentive for players to shine.

Soccer clubs aren’t regional?

I think they mean that if you are, say, Real Madrid you can sign a player who was born in Sevilla, Brazil or Turkey or wherever.

Okay, makes sense.

Doesn’t seem to restrict the ability of soccer clubs to build fanatical fanbases though

True but remember most of these teams have existed for a long time before it became possible for fans to support or follow teams abroad via TV and internet. So teams in smaller markets (eg Scotland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden) have had the chance to build a local support base without necessarily “competing” for their loyalty with those in bigger markets (eg England, Germany, Spain, Italy).

Note that I’ve put “competing” in quotes because I’m talking about fanbases and therefore money to build and develop their teams. Interestingly in the past when they did compete on the field things were much more equal. Before the explosion of TV money thumbed the scales in favour of the bigger players, it wasn’t such a huge shock for, say[0], Dundee United to beat Barcelona or IFK Gothenburg to beat Internazionale that it would today.

[0] in fact both of these results happened, in the semifinals of the 1986/87 European Cup

I cannot speak for other eSports, but I follow Rocket League and it has this rules which gives players the power over the clubs. If two players out of three decide to stick together and either move to another team or form a new Org, they can take their ranking and qualifications with them. So at least for this specific esport it's hard to build loyalty around an Org and it's formed around the players instead.

Regional isn't so much about the players. But that they play every week or every other weak in same stadium with same core group of fans easily being present. And on smaller clubs at least in Europe there is clear pipeline for juniors to the main team players. Thus bulk of the players can be locals.

There are some geographical teams, my brother-in-law loves the Dallas Fuel, but yeah they aren't all.

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