Full-time: Starting from Ye Xiu vs. Faker

Chapter 403: Ending and New Beginning (Part )
Amid the blue rain, the last game of the first season of the LPL region, and also the most important game, came to an end.

However, the game is over, but everything outside the game has just begun.

The first is the impact on public opinion.

Just like concerts are divided into different levels of venues such as livehouse, hall, arena, etc., the scale of the live can be used to identify the status of the artist to a certain extent.
As a sports event of the new era, the scale of the on-site venues for e-sports competitions can also, to a certain extent, reflect the development momentum of this e-sports event.

Of course, with the rapid development of the online live streaming industry and the increase in broadcasting channels, this law is no longer completely applicable.

But for some old-fashioned people, it still has good reference value.

In the glory era, the channels for online viewing were very limited and immature.

Especially the experience of watching the game online, which can be said to be quite bad because of the immature live broadcast system and the weird competition system.

In addition, the Honor League at that time copied the NBA system, implemented a home-court system for each team, and dispersed all teams to major cities across the country to operate.

This has increased the popularity of offline viewing to a certain extent.

But even so, among the twenty teams, each team's home stadium has nearly 10,000 people at most and two to three thousand at least, but the number of teams that can fill their home stadium can be counted on one hand.

If we add "per game" in front of this requirement, then it may really only be possible with a heavyweight traffic team like Tyranny in the ninth season of the original time and space.

By the time of the LPL, with its own live broadcast platform, online viewing has finally become the most mainstream viewing mode for e-sports.

The little money earned from watching the game live seems insignificant.

In order to ensure the compactness of the competition system, the home stadium system of Honor was simply cut off, and the original home stadium with 20 seats that could accommodate six-digit spectators was streamlined to Hongqiao Tiandi, which can accommodate only one or two thousand spectators.

This LPL home stadium is much smaller than any of Honor's previous home stadiums, but the atmosphere is obviously much better than that of the temporarily rented stadium.

But when it comes to a truly significant game, it is obviously inappropriate to choose a home stadium with a thousand people.

So we need to rent a bigger venue.

During the spring season, the home stadium chosen for the spring finals was the original home stadium of Samsara, which was one of the largest among the existing e-sports competition venues and could easily accommodate more than 10,000 people.

In the view of Tencent Esports’ executives at the time, since online live streaming has almost replaced most of the offline viewing, there should not be many people willing to spend the money to watch the game offline.

After all, e-sports is not a traditional sports competition. The players just sit in the battle seat and type on the keyboard throughout the whole process, so the offline viewing experience may not be better than the online one.

But the result was that as soon as the tickets for the Spring Finals were released, 10,000 tickets were sold out in almost an instant.

You know, even the peak battle of Blue Rain Samsara in the eighth season of Glory, the ticket sales were not that terrible.

So when the summer season came, the management, who thought they had learned enough lessons, made a decision to use the iconic Mercedes Center in Shanghai as the venue for the summer finals.

The venue size was increased from 10,000 to 20,000 people, and the Tenghai headquarters was specially contacted to upgrade the ticket selling system to ensure that scalpers could be eliminated.

Anyway, the concept of the headquarters' invincible technology has been regarded as an objective fact by every Tenghai branch.

The scale has been increased and scalpers have been controlled, so the products won’t be sold too quickly this time, right?
It was useless. All 18,000 tickets were sold out in less than 20 seconds, making Feng Xianjun and his colleagues sweat profusely.

No... You guys are so rich, why weren't you so generous during the glory days...

Perhaps, this is the biggest difference between national games and games that are only popular in Internet cafes?
All in all, the internet is still full of complaints about why tickets are becoming harder and harder to buy.

Offline, on the day of the game, not only was the Mercedes-Benz Center packed, but even the square outside the Mercedes-Benz was packed with LPL fans who came to support the game.

They crowded under several large screens temporarily set up by the authorities outside the venue. The atmosphere was orderly and enthusiastic.
Apart from the fact that one is unable to get close to the e-sports players, the viewing experience is no less than that of spectators who buy tickets in the stadium.

There is no doubt that this offline grand event of the summer finals will have a far-reaching impact on the development of e-sports.

It’s not that Tencent Esports really wants the small profits from the tens of thousands of tickets for offline viewing.

Rather, the grand scene of huge crowds inside and outside the stadium has inadvertently become another eye-catching business card for e-sports executives.

It happened that during the game, the official Tencent Esports team also used a drone to take aerial photos of the scenery, so the photo of the audience surrounding the Mercedes-Benz Center in three layers was taken and became a very important promotional material for Tencent Esports.

For some people who don’t have a good understanding of the new era, even the gorgeous data for watching online may not be able to compare with the real offline shooting with a huge crowd.

Looking at the grand occasion, even people who don’t know much about e-sports, when seeing the brilliant neon lights and the enthusiastic crowds blending together in the dark night, can probably feel something like this from a naive perspective:

E-sports has been integrated into the lives of mainstream young people.

However, what is even more amazing is the relevant data from overseas.

Sports events are highly regional in nature, and even e-sports events are no exception.

Locals watching local games is the most common choice in most competitive leagues.

There are only two exceptions:
If a certain event is too weak, so weak that it is unbearable to watch, its audience may choose to watch a higher level league because of anger or fatigue.

I won’t name specific sea cucumber consumers here.

Another situation is that a certain tournament becomes the recognized first league due to the dominant performance of its players in world competitions.

Then it can also attract a considerable number of non-local audiences.

For example, a big part of the reason why the NBA has become popular all over the world is because of the almost dominant performance of NBA players in world competitions such as the Olympics since 1992.

Coincidentally, LPL just meets these conditions.

Even in a region like Japan, because LJL is so weak, the Japanese people's enthusiasm for e-sports has not been able to wait for the day when Street Fighter, the true king of e-sports, will start.

Therefore, the enthusiasm of these people who were driven out of Stockholm by the flowers for watching LPL is quite impressive.

In addition to Neon, LPL also unexpectedly gained a lot of traffic in other regions. After winning the MSI, in addition to the teams sharpening their knives and looking forward to one day completing their revenge on Fanhua and other LPL teams, many self-media channels naturally noticed this overwhelming traffic.

For a time, a large number of messy videos such as "Rational Analysis of Why LPL is the Number One Division" and "Unveiling the Reason Why Fanhua is Invincible" were repeatedly bombarded in different languages ​​on video websites of LOL audiences in different regions.

As we all know, during the period when a certain region wins the championship, those who praise that region must be the zzzqest of zzzq, and even the slightest doubt will be washed away by tap water.

So during that period, foreign media's comments on LPL were almost all positive.

The Tencent Esports officials also understood this well, and worked overtime to implement the LPL overseas expansion plan, which was already being carried out in an orderly manner.

LPL’s official English, Japanese, Korean and other live broadcast rooms just appeared.

With the title of the No. 1 division, and the fact that the LPL games at that time were indeed more entertaining than those in most divisions, after several months of hard work, it can be said that it has successfully cultivated a relatively stable group of LPL fans overseas.

It can also be regarded as another form of cultural export.

Domestically, the mainstream is gradually thriving, and LPL's overseas expansion is also improving. We can only say that in terms of metaphysical things, what LPL has done is truly impeccable.

At least it will be enough for domestic e-sports self-media to bring it out and hype it up again at some point in the future to generate some traffic.

The future is bright...

Turning our attention away from the grand narrative, in stark contrast to the bright overall environment, both teams involved seemed exceptionally calm after the game.

On Happy's side, all six players and the coach were present for the post-match interview, but the scene was unexpectedly calm.

Except for a big-headed doll who was used as a breakthrough point and had an obvious look of frustration on his face, everyone else was in a low mood but was able to maintain the necessary calm.

Seeing Ye Xiu and Ming Kai calmly answering the reporters' tricky questions and apologizing to all the doubters, the reporters were stunned for a moment, and then suddenly realized:

This is the second time they have won runner-up this year. At least for answering reporters' questions after the final, they still have enough experience.

Being runner-up in both spring and summer is a somewhat embarrassing result.

On the one hand, Spring and Summer, completely different versions, were able to reach the finals, which proved that Xingxin is indeed one of the most competitive top teams in the entire league.

But on the other hand, missing out on the championship twice in a row and not winning any honors is indeed a difficult experience to talk about.

But no matter what, at least Xingxin has secured the second ticket to the S-League with this result, and will compete in S1 as the second seed.
In the post-match interview, Ye Xiu and Ming Kai took the blame for the loss on themselves as usual. The two adults in their thirties took all the responsibility for the young people.

Seeing Ye Xiu looking a little haggard but still forcing himself to calm down and finish the game, fans couldn't help but feel a little distressed.

They suddenly remembered something:
Including the Glory period, Ye Xiu seemed to have already been to Sanya.

Although he still has three championships, the most recent one was seven years ago.

Ironically, he also won his fourth regular season MVP this year because of his outstanding personal performance in the spring and summer regular seasons.

His personal strength always seems to be at the top of the league, but for some reason, his team always seems to be lacking something.

Whether it is the previous Jia Shi or the current Xingxin.

He made it to the finals twice this year, but came back empty-handed both times. Fans are really worried about whether his extremely tough but aging heart can support him to withstand such a blow in the late stage of his career.

Even if we make it through, what if we’re still one step behind in the final S game?
Suddenly I feel a little sad.

If Xingxin's spirit and performance were not much better than the half-dead Excellent Era back then, those fans who had been supporting Excellent Era since the days would have probably had a PTSD outbreak long ago.

They couldn't help but think of the other old Deng next door.

The King of Sanya, who was once laughed at by everyone, now has a national champion and a world champion. At least before the S game comes to an end, he is the strongest contender for the GOAT.

Even if Zhang Jiale retires now, his achievements are definitely enough to make him stand on the Mount Rushmore of e-sports.

In the past, the Triple Crown Champion laughed at the Triple Crown King, but now, it seems that everything is reversed.

After finishing this somewhat depressing press conference, Xingxin almost fell into silence. Live broadcasts and other external activities were suspended. It was obvious that they were fully preparing for the final.

Coincidentally, Blue Rain on the other side also chose a similar approach.

At the press conference, this group of people continued their calmness as they did in the finals. Each of them looked so calm that it reminded people of a certain pretentious Xiao Deng.

If it weren't for the majestically designed Silver Dragon Cup that they placed behind them as a backdrop, it would be hard to believe that this group of people would be the champions this year.

The reporters have a lot of gimmicks in their minds, such as the champion female player, Blue Rain's revenge match, etc., just waiting to take advantage of this wave of traffic.

In the end, Blue Rain's response was completely calm and seamless, without any breaking points worth writing about, which made the reporters feel as if their punches were thrown into nothing. How uncomfortable it was!

After the press conference, Blue Rain also chose to remain silent on the Internet, using the reason of "preparing for the S game" and began high-intensity special training.

They knew very well that with the changes in versions and the fact that teams like Xingxin finally had enough time to research and improve, the original tactical reserves were no longer sufficient.

If Blue Rain wants to maintain its championship-level competitiveness, it must keep pace with the times, otherwise it will be liquidated by those old guys who are eyeing it covetously sooner or later.

In addition to these old rivals in China, the foreign strong teams obviously also need enough research. Other teams may look down on them because of their status as the first division of LPL.

But Blue Rain would never make such a mistake.

Yu Wenzhou, who was free, had just managed to calm his brother who was annoyed by him over the phone. Not long after he hung up the phone, the teaching assistant came over with a document.

The content is exactly the old rival that Yu Wenzhou had studied specifically during the spring season, the top four of MSI, the LCK region.

But compared to the calmness when he was researching LCK in the spring, this time, Yu Wenzhou couldn't help but frowned not long after he got the information...

(End of this chapter)