Cover-Credits:
Chris “Riot Commish” Greeley, LCS Commissioner along with Dave “RumbleStew” Stewart, Executive Producer of the LCS addressed concerns around production problems faced during the first week of the League of Legends Championship Series broadcast. Fans took to Reddit and other forums to express their displeasure at the technical and content issues.
The LCS saw a number of glitches during the first week including stream quality issues and inaccurate in-game statistics, etc. Audio delays made it hard to follow what the LCS commentators were talking about. The LCS broadcast graphics were criticized by fans, described by one Redditor as ‘hard to read’. Others complained the screen was overloaded. With too much going on, it took focus away from the matches and commentary.
In a blog post Riot Commish and RumbleStew clarified that “From audio issues to screen flickering, we suffered a series of technical issues that you wouldn’t expect from us, which we hadn’t seen in rehearsal. We’re working with our engineering team to button things up going into Week 2.” The multiple lockdowns across the globe have affected the ways in which tournament organizers have had to adjust schedules and other deadlines in terms of broadcasting events
LCS Change in Schedule Raises AMA numbers
LCS changed their Monday night schedule for the 2020 Summer Split, shifting the matches to Friday to “that draws in viewers outside of just what teams are playing that night.” Riot also attempted to give Friday Night League its own “identity”. One of these changes seems to have backfired though. DJ TheSushiDragon’s segments felt out of place with the broadcast according to many fans. As a result, the LCS will feature the DJ at the end of Friday Night League. Riot stated in the blog post, “This visual style, however, was jarring to many when presented in the LCS DOME. Due to this, we've begun the process of scaling back many of these visual elements in order to make Friday Night League feel more cohesive with the studio environment in the LCS DOME.”
There are positives, however, as Riot Games’ Average Minute Audience (AMA) viewership numbers during the week have been high during the week. LCS Summer Split Week 1 was the “most viewed summer split regular season week since 2016,” with AMA up 20% from 2019 and peak concurrent viewers of 338K, an increase of over 40% from 2019.
The blog post ended with "We’re working as hard as possible to deliver the broadcast experience that you expect of us, and we’ll continue to implement changes to ensure the best possible broadcast across the Summer Split.”
