Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Opportunity

League of Legends is currently only streamed on Twitch.tv and not on any actual television stations.

• The who: TV Stations
• The what: Streaming League of Legends on live television
• The why: No station has negotiated a deal with Riot Games yet

Hypothesis

League of Legends is the fastest growing "e-sport" to date and has brought in millions of viewers over the years through its broadcast. These millions of viewers are extremely valuable to television stations as it will add more publicity to the station along with more opportunities for advertisement agencies. Of course not everyone will want to tune in to watch League but the thousands or even millions that do will reward the station that makes a deal with Riot Games and begins to broadcast League of Legends.

• Testing the who: A station needs to pick up League for a major money opportunity but they have to understand that this will not appeal to every single person and only to those who play and like to watch the game.
• Testing the what: The game is extremely popular already on Twitch.TV so it would become an instant positive for the station that adopts it but they have to be aware that they would probably still be competing with Twitch.TV for viewership numbers.
• Testing the why: A lot of people enjoy watching the game and many would find it enjoyable to watch on a network such as ESPN.

Interviews

Interview 1

• For the first interview I spoke with a man in his mid to late 50s about this possibility. He explained to me that he had no idea what League of Legends even was and that if he ever saw it come onto ESPN he would switch the channel and watch another sport on a different channel since he had no idea about the game.

Interview 2

• This interview I spoke with a 21 year old male who has some experience playing League and said that he would find it enjoyable to watch League on ESPN or some other sports channel. He explained how he enjoyed the game and would like more people to become aware and involved with it. His only concern was that people already enjoyed watching League on Twitch.TV and that this could hurt viewer counts.

Interview 3

• This interview I spoke with a 18 year old male who explained how he likes to play games on the computer but that League was not one of his absolute favorites. He said he might tune in occasionally to watch some games being played but he would much rather watch other games be broadcasted such as CSGO. He said he really liked the idea of an esports channel being created where League and other games would all be broadcasted in the same space so you could get all the information from the same channel.

Interview 4

• This time I spoke with a 20 year old girl who is a big fan of League and really enjoys a lot about the game. She explained how she loved all of the characters and the designs and that she would love to be able to watch it on a sports network such as ESPN. She thinks its a great idea although she too had concerns about not being able to watch it on Twitch because of the live chat that goes on in Twitch's stream.

Interview 5

• I finally interviewed a woman who was in her mid 30s about the idea and while she did not know about League she said it wouldn't be a bad idea after I explained how many people tuned in weekly to the game. She thinks its a good opportunity for a station to seize upon and that its a good way to get ahead of the other competition. She also expressed some concern about some people complaining about a game such as League being on a true sports network and that some people would protest the broadcast but that it shouldn't be too much of a concern.

Summary

Most of the interviews went as expected since gaming as a whole is more popular in the younger generations and people in the older generations may not have even heard of the game before. There were some good points brought up about true sport fans complaining about League being shown on a station such as ESPN and I also quite liked the idea of a true esports network being created and can definitely see a profit to be made from such an adventure. The other thing that was confirmed from these interviews was that there was some serious concerns about Twitch combating viewership numbers with the broadcasting station. Maybe some kind of deal could be made where Twitch would advertise the broadcaster and keep up a logo of the broadcaster on the bottom right of the stream.