I don't understand e-sports teams. They're not representative of a geographical region and a "team" can actually have players on multiple games. It's like if the New York Yankees were just the Yankees and also played football, soccer and basketball. I don't understand the convention for how spectators are intended to root for a team. I get that this thing in regular sports for rooting for the team closes to you is arbitrary, but at least it's clear fun way to be a part of it.
Also in esports a lot of the event hype feels manufactured and forced.
I do like watching esports though, I just think there's so much room for improvement in the whole way the thing is presented.
> I don't understand e-sports teams. They're not representative of a geographical region ... I don't understand the convention for how spectators are intended to root for a team.
That isn't an e-sports specific phenomenon though. Maybe it's the case more with US sports teams, but in something like football/soccer you have teams like Manchester United that have a massive global brand that is attractive to people in multiple countries and may have zero connection to Manchester or England as a whole. People in other countries will choose a team at some point based on specific players they like, a certain style of play, or even who their friends/family are already rooting for. Formula 1 likewise is also just a pure battle of the brands. Pick a team, follow it closely, and cheer for them.
>I don't understand e-sports teams. They're not representative of a geographical region [snip]
I don't understand traditional sports teams. They claim to represent a geographic region, yet the typical player on such teams have as much history or loyalty to that region as I do to Jupiter.
There are geographical regions in League kinda, they're just country/continent size. I enjoy watching the American teams try to compete with other regions (Europe, Korea, China etc.) People generally just root for their region to do well.
As far as rooting for teams within a region, it usually boils down to finding your favorite personalities like that other guy said. Most of them stream on twitch for hours every day.
Also, all of the local regular sports teams I grew up rooting for never win anything so having no ties and getting to be a bandwagon fan in eSports cathartic for me haha
In esports it seems to me like there is more focus on the personalities than the teams. I liked C9 because of Hai and Balls. I liked TSM because of Dyrus. A lot of people like SKT because of Faker, the unkillable demon king[1].
> Remember that most teams are named after their sponsor. A sponsor is not related to any city/esport. It's just a sponsor.
It's a bit more complicated than that, actually. Most of the large esports organizations (examples: Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Fnatic, Team Liquid) have an identity that's separate from both their sponsors and their teams. Teams that represent a single sponsor are pretty rare -- I've seen a few, but they're not common.
This holds true for traditional sports as well. A number of people will follow "their star/their player" wherever they go. Their favorite quarterback was transferred to a new team? That's their favorite team now. The loyalty isn't to the specific team - it's to a specific player or specific players.
