Awesomenauts, Heroes of Newerth Studios Speak Out Against LCS

[Hagi]

I'm a bit confused by the posts saying this is how real sports go.

Admittedly I don't really follow sports much at all but from what I see it happens all the time that you've got clubs sponsored by brand A ( say Puma ) competing in national tournaments sponsored by brand B ( say Nike ) and later international by brand C ( say Adidas ). I mean I know that exact situation is happening with at least one of our national clubs.

Isn't that the normal mode for professional sports? You get as many sponsors as you've got room for on your shirt? And then compete in as many tournaments as big as possible, regardless of whom they're sponsored by, to get as much exposure as possible for those sponsors?

I am in my phone so forgive typos and punctuation issues. The answer is not really. Wjen you get sponsored you enter into a legally binding contractwith exclusionary clauses. As such the idea of getting all the sponsors on your shirt us kinda impossible. Not to mention that if you break that clause then you can and willbe fined aa lot of money. For exampme in the NFL the fine is 50000 dollars per instance.

Maybe it's an American thing?

I mean here in the Netherlands several of our major Football clubs are sponsored by Adidas yet their players also play in our National Team which is sponsored by Nike. Many other sports don't have any long-term competitions anyway and just a collection of single tournaments, each often sponsored by different and often competing companies, with the same sporters and teams participating anyway, each with their own sponsors on top of that.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Obviously it's anti-competitive.
That is LITERALLY the entire purpose of the amended terms in the LCS contract.

Kind of a poetic irony isn't it?
Riot believes to promote how seriously they believe in competition, that they should enact anti-competitive measures.

 

[SecondPrize]

It was revealed earlier this week that the contract for the upcoming fourth League of Legends Championship Series forbids any streaming of other games [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130237-New-LCS-Contract-Forbids-Streaming-Dota-2-Blizzard-Games] by LCS players during the season...

Unless some new info has come out they can stream other games to their heart's content, during the season or not. What they can't do is stream them alongside of league. So playing a game from the verboten list is a no no if they've been playing league and are waiting for a que, but okay if they haven't been playing league. Unless I'm incorrect, it's not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be.

 

[Vyress]

Awesomenauts, Heroes of Newerth Studios Speak Out Against LCS

"I can't stress enough how these guys in the LCS are on the road to being real, legitimate athletes. This is new territory for a lot of teams (especially in esports), because the transition goes from being a group of talented individuals to being real icons of a sport and a league," Rozelle wrote. "Similarly, you probably wouldn't see an NFL player promoting Arena Football or a Nike-sponsored player wearing Reebok on camera. Pro players are free to play whatever games they want - we're simply asking them to keep in mind that, on-stream, they're the face of competitive League of Legends."

Source: onGamers [http://www.ongamers.com/articles/update-awesomenauts-hon-developer-comments-on-riot-stream-and-advertising-restrictions/1100-277/]

Har?
But an NFL player promoting League of Legends is a-ok, huh? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO2URqoUBnU]
What happened? I thought League of Legends is a real sport, so an NFL player shouldn't promote it since it isn't the sport he is being paid for. Yet, he does. And I bet he isn't sanctioned for it either.

The stupidity of this argument is immeasurable. A sports athlete being prohibited from doing other sports or 'promoting' them? Michael Schumacher openly did football (or some of you may know it as soccer I suppose) while being a Formula 1 driver. Pretty much every sports athlete does other sports, if only for training purposes alone. Also, attending big events of other sports where they are often interviewed as well is not really unheard of...

It's ok for Riot wanting to preserve their monopoly, they are a company after all - but damn it, just say so then. You can't do monopolistic practices, while saying all the time how League of Legends has become more than a game, that it has become a 'sport' and a 'profession'.
A sport isn't a product, yet they are clearly wanting to strengthen the monopoly of their 'sport'. And that is exactly why their whole esport promotion stunts are so pointless. For all those over glorifying things they say about League of Legends, how the LCS players are legitimate athletes, how it is evolving into a sport and how amazing that all is -blabla-... the only amazing thing about all that is the amount of money they made of their GAME.

And well, those legitimate athletes will have interesting CVs once the League of Legends train has passed by.

 

[MPerce]

The attempt to compare the restrictions to professional athletes is just absurd. Last time I checked, professional athletes were allowed to play in other venues in their free time.

This is like saying the NBA should have fined Kevin Durant for playing basketball at Rucker Park awhile back. After all, he was recorded doing it, and he represents the NBA. How dare he promote a basketball court in Harlem behind the NBA's back? The nerve of that guy!!!