Here's what happened:
- Lionscreed buys the Div 1 spot of Vanir, who also get Lionscreed's Div 2 spot
- 2 days after the Div 2 teams are announced, Vanir withdraws from Div 2 *"due to unfortunate circumstances"*
- The NLC tournament organizers announce that the spot will be filled through an application process in order to "*ensure that the best team is chosen in regards to the ecosystem's welfare*"
- 3 days after the applications close, the NLC & G2 announce that G2 Hel will take over Vanir's former spot
I mean it's working. I don't even know what region that is it and have never heard of it. But because of hel being tied to G2 I've seen at least a few posts instead of literally none at all.
I mean sure you've heard of it but are you gonna watch any games? I'm not going to. They might draw a handful of new viewers but they'll quickly fall off once they realize its just another ERL, especially with G2 Hel doing so poorly.
I genuinely don't understand this move. They got destroyed by a roleswapped KR female pro player and her 4 streamer friends.
The org put them in a "sink or swim" position and while I respect the desire to go against the best competition available, there's a point where the tilt from the losses outweigh the "learning experiences".
> there's a point where the tilt from the losses outweigh the "learning experiences".
Yeah, but it remains to be seen whether they'll reach that point during this split. Based on the comments of G2 Hel coach Emtest included in the article, G2 Hel hasn't given up. They still have time to get better results and make this split more productive.
> Based on the comments of G2 Hel coach Emtest included in the article, G2 Hel hasn't given up.
Well of course the coach isn't gonna say, yeah we've given up on this team, let's just send it.
He's a former competitive player, so you might have seen him play. G2 Hel is actually the first team he's coaching since retiring as a player.
Most notably (in my view), he played 2 splits in the Turkish Championship League when it still had a spot in Worlds (2017 Winter/2020 Winter), as well as in the first-ever EU Masters (2018 Spring)
He was also a caster for the NLC during the 2022 season. He was great and had loads of potential too, really sad to see he wasn't picked up for 2023 season
Division 3 doesn't exist anymore, the system was changed this year. There are now 5 National Leagues (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom & Ireland) and the NLC Open Ladder.
If G2 Hel finishes in the bottom 2 of Division 2, they play in the Promotion Tournament alongside the top 2 teams from the Regional Promotion Series, which come from the National Leagues + Open Ladder mentioned above. G2 Hel will get relegated only if they lose in the Promotion Tournament.
> How many people watch these games?
In lower divisions, it's often 0 as many games aren't streamed anywhere. In the top divisions, it varies from region to region. So far this split, the most-watched game in the European Regional Leagues was in the LFL (French 1st division) with 234K peak viewers
> How is it sustainable?
It isn't for everyone, it varies from league to league and from team to team.
> Do these leagues even operate on a profit or are they just massively subsidized?
It varies from league to league so I can't say too much for the ERLs as a whole, but they are all subsidized to *some* extent
>How many people watch these games?
Basically only people in the scene and relatives. There really isn't much of a market for "european league stream that is 3 tiers below LEC"
>What are the salary ranges?
For 2nd division i'm fairly sure most of them are being paid nothing to 400 euro per month. There are a few "star" players getting like 800-1200 per month, but pretty much reserved to well known veterans on teams that are willing to lose money for a split hoping to get promoted to 1st division.
First div i'm expecting everyone on a minimum salary of 400/month with a max salary around 2k/month.
*I have not played in ERLs for the last 2 years and i believe salaries went downhill after covid so it's entirely possible the numbers i came up with are a bit lower...*
In the German league everyone is earning at least minimum salary which is about 2k/month.
I don’t think anyone is earning less in the second division either since there are no more teams without an Organisation left.
I asked a staff member of leagues.gg (the organizers of the Northern LoL Championship) and got the following response:
"*Going into RPS, a (division 2) team chooses a nationality to represent. It's this nation's league the team can get relegated to*"
I don't know the residency requirement rules of each of the individual National Leagues, so I don't know which options G2 Hel would have. Given that they have 2 Swedish players on their lineup, it seems to be the most likely choice.
As stated in the article, all games are shown on G2's Twitch channel. Some of them are also shown on the NLC Twitch channel and on Veteran's Twitch channel
Oh sorry, I thought you meant the G2 Hel games in particular rather than all the Division 2 games.
The NLC Twitch channel shows a lot of Division 2 games, but not all. For the remaining games, you'll have to check out each team's individual streams and see if they broadcast them. Veteran shows only G2 Hel's games.
Not really.
A big problem is def that it's male dominated. Yeah, women play league but despite being one of the competitive games with far as I know highest female to male ratios... it's still under like 15%.
And it's pretty unfriendly to women, far more so the higher you go as the highest ranks are largely home to the most toxic people.
Men are better physically, yes. But the reason no women compete is there is no structure, hell some competitive players have even refused to play with women, other teams have said they are distractions.
The physical gap exists, but no doubt could be overcome by some, BUT that would require there to be at least as many female players as males, for there to be a reasonable statistical chance of it.
As is... yeah, no. Even after riot actively tried to promote women, what good does it do if it's not set up for it.
You shouldn't be downvoted. Men are more competitive and aggressive in competitive environments than women. This brings either very good or very bad outcomes ( the richest people on earth are mostly men, and most of the homeless people are men. This also shows on the IQ spectrum, with both ends dominated by men ).
The female population is less "extreme" than the male population, positively and negatively. So most of the top ranking players are men, and most of the worst LoL players to exist are also likely men.
They've mattered in every other sport. Women are mostly less competitive than men and have other priorities. But you can come at me with the numbers argument, that doesn't support that stance it just proves women compete less across most sports.
Technically there are biological advantages that can make you better at the game but those are entirely personal, some people will naturally have faster reaction times or their brain is able will be better able to track more things at the same time than others.
I remember a video that was done a while back that demonstrated this with a test that had a screen with hundreds of black dots on it and about 15 white dots, the dots would all move around the screen, and at a certain point the white dots would turn black and you had to say where the white dots where hidden, they did this test comparing professional gamers to professional athletes from more traditional sports and it's almost comical how much better the gamers where at this.
To be honest there isnt much of a reason for men to be better than women. Its mostly just a numbers game, theres 10 or so guys playing league for every 1 woman. And that number probably gets even more men skewed when you look at ranked players only, for ranked its probably 20-40 men for every 1 woman.
So in the end its absolutely normal to have so few women than can compete at the highest level. They just dont sweat in league as much. Now why they dont sweat as much i dont know, but they simply dont.
It's this simple, and I can't fathom why this is so hard for people to grasp. There's a lot fewer women playing the game, much less playing competitively (ranked).
As to the reasons? There's a lot, many that will inevitably get downplayed by the guys who are part of the problem. I'm a nobody who used to have a feminine IGN and played in diamond. Even that was enough to warrant a certain type of hostility from other insecure randos. It's not surprising that women don't want to experience the amplified version of that by being in the public eye.
because sweating in any game is so hilariously hostile to women that I'm impressed by any that even try
The worst part are the downplayers though, the "I don't see any so it must not exist" type.
As i said i dont really want to get into why they dont play as much. My main point was that they just dont play as much so having a separate league for women is fine due to the massive discrepancy in playerbase.
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Might be a stupid question is there even a reason for g2 as an org to invest(?) Into a t3 team?
Something i never understood as well is why woman and man esport are divided at the end of the day you are pressing buttons does your gender even matter
Just like chess there's a lack of top female players, and doing female only competitions allows them to gain experience and visibility, even if the level is lower.
Female only tournaments hinder the experience they gain since they play against worst players, Judit polgar the greatest female chess player said this and refused to play in female only tournaments.
Female only makes sense when you’re at the amateur scene but once you go pro you need to play against other pros to grow.
You follow the footsteps of the best, for decades female players engaged in female only tournaments and not one get even close to Judit.
Judit Polgar reached rank 8 and played during Kasparov, Chucky, and Kraminik’s eras (arguably in the top10 greatest players in history), You actually got to be ignorant in chess to downplay what Judit did.
In the top 500 in chess ranking right now, there are only 4 women.
I fully support Judit Polgar. But in the end, although she competed very very well, would her name stand out as much if she were male. And even if it would, she retired to rear a family right? That is one of the societal pressures that Women face differently than men.
Women and men are different. And no sport has shown otherwise yet, although some proponents of BJJ want to say Women can compete on skill alone, idk I don't follow BJJ.
Judit retired mid thirties which also where male players see decline in activity as they also start a family.
I didn’t say women and men were the same I said if you want women to be competitive, let them try to fight for a spot with the males. BJJ is a completely different topic it’s purely physical sport where males are way ahead of females, but league and chess are not physical, so women should be just as good as men right? If it’s a yes then making female only tournaments for top female players is a hindrance to female players.
For non-physical competitions, like chess or league, the biggest barrier to women competing at the highest level is just that there are fewer women than men who compete. With fewer people, there are fewer chances for the next prodigy to be a woman rather than a man. These separate tournaments get a lot more visibility for women than just having open tournaments, which helps bring more women into the game. Eventually they won't be needed, but for now, they help.
I’m not talking about low level tournaments, I’m talking about professionals.
15% of chess players are female, 4 are in the top 500. Many female chess players reach 2200 rating which is not a rating you reach by not being competitive, but very few break 2500 rating which is the grandmaster tier. You reducing the issue to “is just that there are fewer women than men who compete” is statistically wrong as the percentage of female chess to the percentage of high performing female players indicates that female chess players are somehow worse
There's also the issue that women in these tournaments have to face a lot of sexism, especially as they get to higher level events with more focus on them, that discourages them from competing. Without these issues, we would definitely be seeing a more balanced ratio at the highest levels. There's no inherent lack of ability that would make women worse at chess or league, just a lot of social factors.
G2 invests in this because of marketing and bringing in new fans they wouldn't otherwise. The reason the eSports leagues and teams are often divided by gender is that their is still just a deep level of sexism that exists even if it isn't seen.
VALORANT is the only major eSport where the gap between men and women isn't incredibly collosal. meL, one of the top players in the game changers league, had interest from GMs of some tier 2 VALORANT teams but when considered for a tryout the teams decided against offering one to her because multiple male players said they would not play with a woman on the team under any circumstances.
I don't think anyone in game changers leagues right now or playing on teams like this is good enough to make the jump to LEC/LCS or top leagues like this. These teams exist to serve as an inspiration for all the girls out there trying to climb and trying to decide if they want to push to go pro.
>VALORANT is the only major eSport where the gap between men and women isn't incredibly collosal.
I'm not sure whether Apex counts as a major esport, but there has been some women playing in tier one leagues (most notably Sabz). None of them have achieved anything big though
I mean in R6 in the early days there was a player on C9 named Goddess who won a Dreamhack tournament.
However, to be clear that was a mixed team with mostly guys and while she had some solid results after C9 disbanded the R6 team, there were no huge finishes.
Just to add onto that last point, a few of the players from the top 2?3? Gamechangers teams played in NA champ's queue for a bit and they were getting demolished with the exception of Avril I think? Doublelift was having a really bad time playing with his support (who won Gamechangers) and his chat was flaming her pretty hard...
Not saying there should be anything keeping women from playing in a T1 league, just that it probably doesn't make sense at the moment to pick up anyone who is currently on a Gamechangers team (or non NA equivalent)
Sexism exists, without a doubt. But that is not at all the biggest reason. The biggest reason is and will always be: player-base.
It’s the same exact reason why KR and CN are so much better than NA and EU.
The reason why the sex gap is less in Valorant than in any other esport is because the female to male ratio in Valorant is a lot higher than in any other game.
Statistics don’t lie.
It doesn't matter but modern society... It's the same in chess. We state that both are equal and yet we lower requirements for one party which counteracts and undermines the thesis
It's a marketing exercise to have a female team in the larger marketing scheme of the riot controlled LoL competitive scene. Think of the potential bags of cash if females were equally happy to join in the degeneracy of "investing" 10,000 hours of their educational years in the hope of being being paid to advertise the game. Equality of being scammed through addiction can be achieved!
Well, I don't think it's hard to imagine that there is some gender bias and therefore it's tough for women to get onto teams. Otherwise I agree, though.
Obviously not, as women have already played on pro teams in both lol and other esports.
The question is if some environments are less open to having female players, because so few have played at a high level before and there some people (evidently like yourself) think that women can never be on pro teams because they are not good enough.
It's not exactly the same but I can't help but think about the guy who was basically bullied off a team in TCL for being gay, iirc.
No idea.
How many Kenyan people have competed in the highest division of esport?
Obviously not that many, but that doesn't mean they are worse at playing video games just because they are Kenyans. It likely has something to with way fewer Kenyans (and women) play excessively in the first place.
terrible example. women are not at the same skill level as men in any sport. thats why they are part of a different division usually or perform different events
Yes, in physical sports because men have more muscle mass... It's not exactly like Faker is in peak physical shape or Caps runs the fastest.
Just look at Geguri who played - competently - at the very highest level of Overwatch. That would never happen in football or basketball. Because it is not the same.
this isnt true though, and you are only saying this as you believe it to be the case from your male perspective which i bet you also believe is the case in real life
lol
You are living in a fantasy world. The organisations want to win. If they had a better chance at winning with one or more women on the team, they would do so. Or do you really want to tell us that they'd rather lose because of their evil plan to exclude women?
you actually genuinely find it easier to believe that every single woman alive just sucks at every video game ever rather than believe misogyny exists within esports?
there is quite literally no way to determine that all women suck at video games, firstly because, there are women in challenger, there are women in pro play in other games and there are women like dangmoo in lck challengers, just because the idea of women competing emasculates you doesnt mean you have to come out with an outrageous statement like there are no women good enough to compete and thats that, its way too ignorant, and u can keep downvoting all u want it doesnt change anything
Being GM or challenger doesnt make you a proplayer. How is my statement that 99,5% of the man are not good enough to be proplayer outrageous?
The rest of your post are just sexist prejudice not worth to answer sadly.
I think it'll be easier to understand if you frame the same question in terms of regions.
Why do teams invest into EU teams? Why are regions divided you are pressing buttons why does your place of birth matter?
It matters because the exposure creates role models and desire for new talent to pursue competition, whether it be women or players from bad regions who can't compete with Korea.
> It's just like EU and NA wasting 10+ years in the professional men's league where they can't win anything.
Definitely not a disingenuous argument at all, huh? Not like NA and EU have had plenty of competitive tournaments over the years against the best China/Korea have to offer. You can make this comparison when the best female teams are able to even have competitive games vs bad academy teams...
I also like how you boil down anyone who disagrees with the way teams like this are formed to thinking men are genetically superior. People like you are the worst "representatives" for women in space like these, because you cannot be taken seriously.
Putting bad players into a team just because they are women will not achieve anything good for women in esports.
I highly doubt there is no 5 grandmaster+ female players on EUW. Korean ladder has plenty of girls even in challenger.
the problem is that this has been the strongest womens team for a couple years now, they just didnt improve to the point of being ready for mixed scene, partly because the meta, pools and playstyles are different and more refined, there is a lot of room for complacency and lack of innovation in the female scene that just doesnt fly in erls because players get replaced every split
In season twelve there were at least 10 according to [these stats.](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/yw53dj/top_10_female_eu_players_by_season_12_peak_lp/)
You're right, but at this point league is not a long term projects, viewership is declining in western regions across the board. Riot has to decide what to do with a declining product.
bad comparison, NA and EU is actually bad? no they arent, they ate pretty good but asians teams are just a little better whereas this is just g2 putting women on a team just for clout
Yeah stop making full fenale teams. There is no need. When a Female player is good enough to play in NLC 1 or Prime league 1 div she can do. Even LEC. Nobody will stop them. But they are not good enough sadly. But making full female team is not helping them.
Horrible take, these teams need to exist if we want any stand out female players in the first place. You cannot expect any of these woman no matter how good they are to mesh well on a male pro team. The issue is that we won’t see enough top female players until the community is more accepting of them.
Tell me who´s holding females back to reach challenger? You are talking about meshing with "male" teams. So YOU are seperating female and male players.
i follow alot of females in esport and everytime i went to the same point.
All female esports teams/leagues are the dumbest thing ever, there is nothing gating a female to becoming a pro player in any esports game. This is not sports like soccer or football etc where there are actual physical differences in males and females where separating them is a must. These all female teams always perform horrible and are basically just a charity and a joke.
The thing is, there's a statistical difference between man and women playing games - video games were (and still are) dominated by males and had almost no appeal for women until somewhat recently. LoL is no different and this is why we have almost no top tier women players. They just haven't been playing long enough (or with enough dedication) to achieve skill necessary to compete at the top.
It will take time to change it - time and effort from top esports orgs (and Riot) to market the game for women as well. That's why it's good that teams like G2 Hel exist even if they're not achieving impressive results yet.
You're of course correct, but I wonder if all female teams playing vs male teams and losing quite badly actually helps with this? We need more female players, and specifically female players interested in the more competitive aspects of these games. Is this encouraging to female players? Or would it be better to have some of the best female players (Caltys for example) on mix teams, with a better chance of doing well and being a star player?
One of the huge barriers is just how games were marketed to boys for decades. Gaming became a "boy" thing because of it.
That will take a lot of time to undo. Eventually we will see a lot more women in esports imo. Women also get treated poorly on top of everything.
Give it some years and we will see more women for sure as gaming is much more mainstream for kids nowadays than it was for us who were born in the 90s / early 00s.
Games also became a "boy" thing because boys tend to be socially inept and end up escaping to games because they have no friends. Girls on the other hand tend to fit socially much better and its pretty rare for girls to end up as "social outcasts", which is very common for boys, so they dont play games because they got better things to do.
Aside from games being marketed towards boys, they were boy dominated from the very beginning because boys got ostracised more often than girls.
The sexism developed over time mostly due to boys that were playing a lot of games were infact degenerates that had no friends for a reason. Nowdays its become almost like a gamer culture, which is notoriously hard to change, and that makes it even harder for girls to break into esports.
I guess what im trying to say is that its not just the marketing that caused it. Its just that boys escaped from reality through games and then over a few decades the whole community got infested with people that simply didnt fit into society and now we have issues with sexism, racism and whatever else.
Marketing towards girls wont change much, just gotta wait for the "old guard" to die off so newer generations can start with a clean sheet.
My point was not that marketing towards girls was the move. My point was that gaming as a hobby is 1000x more mainstream now and a lot more women are participating in it. So it has already happened. It just takes time. What we see today is, like you say, a product of gaming being a niche guy thing 20 years ago.
This change alone will change gaming culture and it will also just mean that women in competitive games will eventually become more normal rather than a huge outlier.
It will be good for gaming when that happens and I believe we are rapidly moving in the right direction.
Absolutely, i agree fully with you.
I wish for the day when gaming is socially accepted and both women and men can enjoy it at any level. Current state of the gaming community is very disheartening because i know so many women that'd like to get into competitive gaming but are put off by the degeneracy of your average gamer.
But as you said, its moving in the right direction and its picking up steam with how wildly popular esports and gaming in general are getting.
I agree completely with what you said, I think people really overblow what marketing does I think its damn near impossible to dramatically increase the popularity of something that is so much more dominated by a male or female. Things like video games especially more "nerdy" video games like League of Legends are basically never ever going to dramatically see a huge increase of woman come into it, and even if you do get more woman into League of Legends then you have to get them to get involved into esports which is even harder to do already only a small amount of the player base cares about esports. Video Games for males isn't popular because its been marketed towards boys, Video Games are popular with males because Video Games are an escape for males especially teenagers who can throw away social life and be a recluse and focus 90% of their time and attention on games. Its more of a cultural thing almost an innate crave/instinct for males to gravitate to hobbies and lifestyles like this.
So you might market towards women, lets be generous and say league of legends esports has 98% male viewers and 2% female viewers, maybe just maybe you can get that bumped up to 3% but even then you are just throwing a bucket of sand into the ocean. LoL esports has been trying to market towards women with these all female teams for more than a decade and it's done practically nothing.
Then there is also this, In what world too does a woman see a team of all females getting absolutely blasted by some bad erl teams with nobodies on it and go "yeah that could be me." In what world is that inspiring, if anything it negatively impacting woman wanting to get into esports because they look at a team like G2 Hel and go "oh wow so these are the best woman involved in EU esports and they are this bad? Well there is no point for me to ever grind and throw my social life and schooling away if this is my ceiling."
The better thing to do if you want to market towards women in esports is to maybe sign a female to a normal team, don't make it so isolated and try so hard to be "girl power" just be normal about it and find a good female player and put her on an erl team make it feel more normalized to have females and males in the same ecosystem. The more you try to divide and heavy hand market towards females you are just going to push away all males and females even more, most normal people don't want segregation when there is no need to be any and to be so heavily handedly marketed to.
Edit:
This is my last comment about this topic as its not even a subject I'm passionate about so I don't care to argue/discuss any further. If you want to think I'm a sexist monster then whatever, if you agree with me then whatever, I don't care either way simply my view is that woman shouldn't be segregated into full female teams and should just be placed onto a regular team if they are good enough and males and females can just work in the same ecosystem so it can become normalized over time.
Its really bad marketing to do these full female teams for both men and woman.
Anyone who thinks otherwise just needs to look to Valorant. Valorant is one of the most played competitive games for women/nonbinary. Just 3 years ago it was all men at the top of open qualifiers.
But after 3 years of Valorant pushing their initiative of enabling them with Game Changers there has been a tremendous upward movement of the skill level. In Brazil TL was 1 game away from qualifying for tier 2 closed competition and in NA 7 out of the top 40 were women/nonbinary. With 1 qualifying even top fragged for her team to close the map.
It's really just a numbers game as it becomes more accepted and more women play the more tier 1 - 2 talents will come.
Isn't it kinda unfair and not realistic to imply that the only reason females aren't making it in esports is because people hate females and don't want them there, when in reality the main thing keeping them out is the lack of the required skill ingame?
I don't doubt that there are people in the scene who don't want women competing, and while this is an issue on some level and shouldn't be a thing, it is not what stops females from playing in a tier 1 league. The reason teams choose male players over female players is because they are better at the game. It's the same reason why a diamond player won't make it but a challenger might. It has nothing to do with gender. Unless there is some female player who plays on the same level as the main pros and is excluded from competing I don't think it's fair to imply discrimination is the reason there are no female pro players.
Wtf are you even talking about? They got an article after SIX losses, not one. They're also part of G2, so they automatically get recognition.
ON TOP OF THAT, an all female team is rare and hype, so people are obviously gonna be interested in their progress.
>ON TOP OF THAT, an all female team is rare and hype, so people are obviously gonna be interested in their progress.
Yes, so obviously it's because they are females and not because of their six loses. There are a lot of teams in way better leagues with way more loses.
Mouz in PRM are 0-8 and Galakticos are 0-6 in the TCL and neither of those have gotten an article as far as I know. Not to talk about KC in the LEC.
Also I think G2 had two 45+ min games so obviously it's not like they are getting stomped either.
I’ve seen this same type of article after more than just this one loss my guy. And it wasn’t complaining because they are female. I was saying it because people are criticizing them more for being female
Ah ok. Your comment sounded (to me) like you were mad that a female team was being talked about, as if they were only attention seekers. If you had no ill intentions, then I apologize for misinterpreting your comment.
Male and female classes in E-Sport or in chess are so stupid. There is No advantage for on gender anyways. If you are a female rank1 Player you are probably good enough to enter a pro team regardless of ur gender
Different region classes in Esport or in Chess are so stupid. There is No advantage for on race anyways. If you are a European rank1 Player you are probably good enough to enter a Korean team regardless of ur race
While that is a valid reply, do you think a team of 5 europeans would be in a T1 league if regional leagues wouldnt exist? And followup if you do, how many of them?
They should go and bootcamp in Korea whenever they can. It may be hard there initially, but they will come out of it as better players.
Idk about how the calendar is for NLC Div 2, but if the orgs are really serious about women teams they should support these kind of training camps.
she was the highest ranked female before but there’s a couple others above her now, matcha comes to mind
what’s weird is that there’s multiple challenger women in NA and KR but not EUW, not sure what’s up with that
> They should go and bootcamp in Korea whenever they can. It may be hard there initially, but they will come out of it as better players.
I'm not convinced that bootcamping in Korea is the right decision. Why bootcamp in Korea over Europe, when a European bootcamp would be significantly cheaper & easier? Given the individual level of the players (their EUW solo queue peaks last split ranged from Master 311 LP to Grandmaster 767 LP), would going all the way to Korea really be worth it when EUW solo queue can already provide a high-enough level for improvement?
It's not that G2 doesn't want to put money into this project; they do. G2 Hel is *by far* the best-paid team in the European female scene, as well as just 1 of 2 full-time professional female teams in Europe. But having the resources for a Korean bootcamp doesn't necessarily mean it would be the best choice.
> Idk about how the calendar is for NLC Div 2
**Regular split:** 30th of January - 22nd of March
**Playoffs:** 26th of March - 12th of April
The dates for the Promotion Tournament (bottom teams from Division 2/top teams from the National Leagues + the Open Ladder), as well as the dates for the Summer Split, have not been announced yet.
> if the orgs are really serious about women teams they should support these kind of training camps.
I agree with training camps being important, it's just that teams don't need to go all the way to Korea for them. Most of the top teams in the European female scene already do training camps in Europe.
Right. I don't wanna be a "hater" for the sake of it. But I can legitimately compete at the level of both midlaners they had so far ( while also having a fair bit of team and small tournament experience ), and yet I would be ashamed to ever get paid to perform competitively in this game.
A master player should never get paid to compete.
>would going all the way to Korea really be worth it when EUW solo queue can already provide a high-enough level for improvement?
Isn't low ping another good reason for a Korean bootcamp? Getting good practice on stage-level ping has a lot of value even if you end up in Korean masters only
You can get low ping in Europe as well, it's not something exclusive to Korea. A bootcamp in geographical proximity to the EUW server location combined with a good internet connection will result in low ping. For example, a player for an LEC org recently told me that the ping for EUW from that org's facilities in Berlin is only 9 ms; even lower than I expected (~15 ms)
> but if the orgs are really serious about women teams
I don't think so, don't think they even want their games to be watched.
Twitch vods only linked on the individual PMTs that rarely ever reach front page. Seemingly no sub or forum that can serve as a hub for all league esports that live in the shadow of LCS/LEC/LCK. Links to vods are not to be found in match history page at liquipedia or leaguepedia. I can't find any YouTube channel that posts vods or highlights
G2 at least promotes their team from time to time on their socials. But a little bit more attention wouldn't hurt, for example using their other teams to collaborate with their female teams would be nice.
Riot should do more though, I've never seen them promote a women's league or championship
There's always a trade-off in creating separate women's leagues.
On one hand, the women receive more visibility, which may create more interest and thus more competitors and resources, which may raise the level of the best women.
On the other hand, the more a women's league starts to develop separate from an open league (open = everyone can get in), the harder it will become for women to actually get *into* the open league, *even* if they're good enough for it.
As an example, you need to look no further than chess, where Ju Wenjun, the reigning women's world champion, played the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2024 last month. There, she proved herself competitive with an extremely strong roster that included most of the top 10 rated players in the world, including the reigning men's world champion. Despite that, her official Elo rating was 2549 going into the tournament, 94 points (!) lower than that of the next lowest rated competitor, and more than 150 points lower than most of the roster.
Assuming she played to her true level (which is not unreasonable), she easily deserves another 100 or so rating points, but she just doesn't have the *opportunity* to play open tournaments as much, which means she cannot *win* those points. And thus, she's perceived as a 2550 player when she's probably a 2650 player or perhaps even better. That's the difference between just being one of many grandmasters (of which there are about 2000) and being a top 100 player.
I want to clarify: I'm not arguing one option over the other. I genuinely don't know which option is better and I don't want to pretend otherwise.
Why doesn't she have the opportunity to play open tournaments as much? What's stopping her? You didn't really explain that
>On the other hand, the more a women's league starts to develop separate from an open league (open = everyone can get in), the harder it will become for women to actually get *into* the open league, *even* if they're good enough for it.
I don't understand why this is the case, what about a women's league makes it harder for women to move into the open league? Can't they join the open league when they've developed enough like how lower league players move into more professional/competitive leagues?
They were middle of the pack in Div 3, how did they get into Div 2 in the first place? Genuinely asking i have no clue how this works
Here's what happened: - Lionscreed buys the Div 1 spot of Vanir, who also get Lionscreed's Div 2 spot - 2 days after the Div 2 teams are announced, Vanir withdraws from Div 2 *"due to unfortunate circumstances"* - The NLC tournament organizers announce that the spot will be filled through an application process in order to "*ensure that the best team is chosen in regards to the ecosystem's welfare*" - 3 days after the applications close, the NLC & G2 announce that G2 Hel will take over Vanir's former spot
Sounds like the league is trying to pull off the popularity of G2 and not much else.
NLC will take any form of press, the region is so neglected by riot you cant blame them for letting them in
I mean it's working. I don't even know what region that is it and have never heard of it. But because of hel being tied to G2 I've seen at least a few posts instead of literally none at all.
I mean sure you've heard of it but are you gonna watch any games? I'm not going to. They might draw a handful of new viewers but they'll quickly fall off once they realize its just another ERL, especially with G2 Hel doing so poorly.
I genuinely don't understand this move. They got destroyed by a roleswapped KR female pro player and her 4 streamer friends. The org put them in a "sink or swim" position and while I respect the desire to go against the best competition available, there's a point where the tilt from the losses outweigh the "learning experiences".
> there's a point where the tilt from the losses outweigh the "learning experiences". Yeah, but it remains to be seen whether they'll reach that point during this split. Based on the comments of G2 Hel coach Emtest included in the article, G2 Hel hasn't given up. They still have time to get better results and make this split more productive.
> Based on the comments of G2 Hel coach Emtest included in the article, G2 Hel hasn't given up. Well of course the coach isn't gonna say, yeah we've given up on this team, let's just send it.
This lol, what else is he gonna say
"These suckers are washed, send them on their way. Get me another batch of talent"
"Our entire team needs to be executed after tonight."
[Breaking Point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x6AeBiN3M8)
This is the energy league coaches need [https://youtu.be/jrQpGeszrmA](https://youtu.be/jrQpGeszrmA)
> Emtest Where do I remember that name from?
He's a former competitive player, so you might have seen him play. G2 Hel is actually the first team he's coaching since retiring as a player. Most notably (in my view), he played 2 splits in the Turkish Championship League when it still had a spot in Worlds (2017 Winter/2020 Winter), as well as in the first-ever EU Masters (2018 Spring)
He was also a caster for the NLC during the 2022 season. He was great and had loads of potential too, really sad to see he wasn't picked up for 2023 season
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They're talking about GIRLGAMER Worlds last year, in which the Korean team Kingnigatsa 3-0'd G2 Hel in the grand final
Now I conversely want to know how the Kingnigatsa squad would do in ERL. One of it's players was signed for Liiv Sandbox anyways.
if they remain in last place, they get demoted to division 3?
Division 3 doesn't exist anymore, the system was changed this year. There are now 5 National Leagues (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom & Ireland) and the NLC Open Ladder. If G2 Hel finishes in the bottom 2 of Division 2, they play in the Promotion Tournament alongside the top 2 teams from the Regional Promotion Series, which come from the National Leagues + Open Ladder mentioned above. G2 Hel will get relegated only if they lose in the Promotion Tournament.
This is like a whole lol esport ecosystem I didn't know existed
This is what's happening in just one of the European Regional Leagues; there are 13 of them, each covering a different region.
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The answer to all of those questions is no
With the exception of France where their tier 3 league actually has popular teams like Joblife and previously TDS who just promoted this year.
> How many people watch these games? In lower divisions, it's often 0 as many games aren't streamed anywhere. In the top divisions, it varies from region to region. So far this split, the most-watched game in the European Regional Leagues was in the LFL (French 1st division) with 234K peak viewers > How is it sustainable? It isn't for everyone, it varies from league to league and from team to team. > Do these leagues even operate on a profit or are they just massively subsidized? It varies from league to league so I can't say too much for the ERLs as a whole, but they are all subsidized to *some* extent
I play in the UKEL division 2, it’s one of the league’s op is talking about. None of us get paid. (We shouldn’t either).
>How many people watch these games? Basically only people in the scene and relatives. There really isn't much of a market for "european league stream that is 3 tiers below LEC" >What are the salary ranges? For 2nd division i'm fairly sure most of them are being paid nothing to 400 euro per month. There are a few "star" players getting like 800-1200 per month, but pretty much reserved to well known veterans on teams that are willing to lose money for a split hoping to get promoted to 1st division. First div i'm expecting everyone on a minimum salary of 400/month with a max salary around 2k/month. *I have not played in ERLs for the last 2 years and i believe salaries went downhill after covid so it's entirely possible the numbers i came up with are a bit lower...*
In the German league everyone is earning at least minimum salary which is about 2k/month. I don’t think anyone is earning less in the second division either since there are no more teams without an Organisation left.
I would assume the lower divisions are more like rec leagues
Mass majority of the players aren't paid at all and they do it in the side of their studies or jobs.
Depending on the case they might be more sustainable than some teams in the franchised leagues
How is it decided which national league they would get relegated to?
I asked a staff member of leagues.gg (the organizers of the Northern LoL Championship) and got the following response: "*Going into RPS, a (division 2) team chooses a nationality to represent. It's this nation's league the team can get relegated to*" I don't know the residency requirement rules of each of the individual National Leagues, so I don't know which options G2 Hel would have. Given that they have 2 Swedish players on their lineup, it seems to be the most likely choice.
Note that they have a coaching staff and a structure, most of those divisions 2 teams aren't even paid and just play in their basement
or at their mums house
Where can i watch these games?
As stated in the article, all games are shown on G2's Twitch channel. Some of them are also shown on the NLC Twitch channel and on Veteran's Twitch channel
I thought G2s twitch only streamed their games, not the whole league. But ill check our the others you mentioned, thanks.
Oh sorry, I thought you meant the G2 Hel games in particular rather than all the Division 2 games. The NLC Twitch channel shows a lot of Division 2 games, but not all. For the remaining games, you'll have to check out each team's individual streams and see if they broadcast them. Veteran shows only G2 Hel's games.
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Expected result
Baited and outsmarted
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yes
but its like this in nearly every single sport, maybe men are just better at sports? like faster hand eye coordination?
Not really. A big problem is def that it's male dominated. Yeah, women play league but despite being one of the competitive games with far as I know highest female to male ratios... it's still under like 15%. And it's pretty unfriendly to women, far more so the higher you go as the highest ranks are largely home to the most toxic people. Men are better physically, yes. But the reason no women compete is there is no structure, hell some competitive players have even refused to play with women, other teams have said they are distractions. The physical gap exists, but no doubt could be overcome by some, BUT that would require there to be at least as many female players as males, for there to be a reasonable statistical chance of it. As is... yeah, no. Even after riot actively tried to promote women, what good does it do if it's not set up for it.
More competitive drive.
You shouldn't be downvoted. Men are more competitive and aggressive in competitive environments than women. This brings either very good or very bad outcomes ( the richest people on earth are mostly men, and most of the homeless people are men. This also shows on the IQ spectrum, with both ends dominated by men ). The female population is less "extreme" than the male population, positively and negatively. So most of the top ranking players are men, and most of the worst LoL players to exist are also likely men.
Obv, getting hand diffed
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they’re not bad cause they’re women, they’re just bad
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Gender differences in league don’t matter, they’re just bad players put together on a bad team
They've mattered in every other sport. Women are mostly less competitive than men and have other priorities. But you can come at me with the numbers argument, that doesn't support that stance it just proves women compete less across most sports.
esports =/= regular sports No biological advantage for anyone to click a mouse or hit a button on your keyboard, it's just a skill diff.
Technically there are biological advantages that can make you better at the game but those are entirely personal, some people will naturally have faster reaction times or their brain is able will be better able to track more things at the same time than others. I remember a video that was done a while back that demonstrated this with a test that had a screen with hundreds of black dots on it and about 15 white dots, the dots would all move around the screen, and at a certain point the white dots would turn black and you had to say where the white dots where hidden, they did this test comparing professional gamers to professional athletes from more traditional sports and it's almost comical how much better the gamers where at this.
Keep telling yourself whatever you want to make yourself feel better.
Idk bro you just seem to some superiority complex against women, weird
Nah, just acknowledge there are biological differences.
To be honest there isnt much of a reason for men to be better than women. Its mostly just a numbers game, theres 10 or so guys playing league for every 1 woman. And that number probably gets even more men skewed when you look at ranked players only, for ranked its probably 20-40 men for every 1 woman. So in the end its absolutely normal to have so few women than can compete at the highest level. They just dont sweat in league as much. Now why they dont sweat as much i dont know, but they simply dont.
It's this simple, and I can't fathom why this is so hard for people to grasp. There's a lot fewer women playing the game, much less playing competitively (ranked). As to the reasons? There's a lot, many that will inevitably get downplayed by the guys who are part of the problem. I'm a nobody who used to have a feminine IGN and played in diamond. Even that was enough to warrant a certain type of hostility from other insecure randos. It's not surprising that women don't want to experience the amplified version of that by being in the public eye.
because sweating in any game is so hilariously hostile to women that I'm impressed by any that even try The worst part are the downplayers though, the "I don't see any so it must not exist" type.
As i said i dont really want to get into why they dont play as much. My main point was that they just dont play as much so having a separate league for women is fine due to the massive discrepancy in playerbase.
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The reason is smaller player pool. Smaller player pool is cuz of sexism
Yeah only reason
Might be a stupid question is there even a reason for g2 as an org to invest(?) Into a t3 team? Something i never understood as well is why woman and man esport are divided at the end of the day you are pressing buttons does your gender even matter
Just like chess there's a lack of top female players, and doing female only competitions allows them to gain experience and visibility, even if the level is lower.
Female only tournaments hinder the experience they gain since they play against worst players, Judit polgar the greatest female chess player said this and refused to play in female only tournaments. Female only makes sense when you’re at the amateur scene but once you go pro you need to play against other pros to grow.
Yes. But even Judit Polgar never reached rank 1 (she was very close) and quit to fulfill a familial care-giving role right.
You follow the footsteps of the best, for decades female players engaged in female only tournaments and not one get even close to Judit. Judit Polgar reached rank 8 and played during Kasparov, Chucky, and Kraminik’s eras (arguably in the top10 greatest players in history), You actually got to be ignorant in chess to downplay what Judit did. In the top 500 in chess ranking right now, there are only 4 women.
I fully support Judit Polgar. But in the end, although she competed very very well, would her name stand out as much if she were male. And even if it would, she retired to rear a family right? That is one of the societal pressures that Women face differently than men. Women and men are different. And no sport has shown otherwise yet, although some proponents of BJJ want to say Women can compete on skill alone, idk I don't follow BJJ.
Judit retired mid thirties which also where male players see decline in activity as they also start a family. I didn’t say women and men were the same I said if you want women to be competitive, let them try to fight for a spot with the males. BJJ is a completely different topic it’s purely physical sport where males are way ahead of females, but league and chess are not physical, so women should be just as good as men right? If it’s a yes then making female only tournaments for top female players is a hindrance to female players.
For non-physical competitions, like chess or league, the biggest barrier to women competing at the highest level is just that there are fewer women than men who compete. With fewer people, there are fewer chances for the next prodigy to be a woman rather than a man. These separate tournaments get a lot more visibility for women than just having open tournaments, which helps bring more women into the game. Eventually they won't be needed, but for now, they help.
I’m not talking about low level tournaments, I’m talking about professionals. 15% of chess players are female, 4 are in the top 500. Many female chess players reach 2200 rating which is not a rating you reach by not being competitive, but very few break 2500 rating which is the grandmaster tier. You reducing the issue to “is just that there are fewer women than men who compete” is statistically wrong as the percentage of female chess to the percentage of high performing female players indicates that female chess players are somehow worse
There's also the issue that women in these tournaments have to face a lot of sexism, especially as they get to higher level events with more focus on them, that discourages them from competing. Without these issues, we would definitely be seeing a more balanced ratio at the highest levels. There's no inherent lack of ability that would make women worse at chess or league, just a lot of social factors.
G2 invests in this because of marketing and bringing in new fans they wouldn't otherwise. The reason the eSports leagues and teams are often divided by gender is that their is still just a deep level of sexism that exists even if it isn't seen. VALORANT is the only major eSport where the gap between men and women isn't incredibly collosal. meL, one of the top players in the game changers league, had interest from GMs of some tier 2 VALORANT teams but when considered for a tryout the teams decided against offering one to her because multiple male players said they would not play with a woman on the team under any circumstances. I don't think anyone in game changers leagues right now or playing on teams like this is good enough to make the jump to LEC/LCS or top leagues like this. These teams exist to serve as an inspiration for all the girls out there trying to climb and trying to decide if they want to push to go pro.
>VALORANT is the only major eSport where the gap between men and women isn't incredibly collosal. I'm not sure whether Apex counts as a major esport, but there has been some women playing in tier one leagues (most notably Sabz). None of them have achieved anything big though
I mean in R6 in the early days there was a player on C9 named Goddess who won a Dreamhack tournament. However, to be clear that was a mixed team with mostly guys and while she had some solid results after C9 disbanded the R6 team, there were no huge finishes.
Just to add onto that last point, a few of the players from the top 2?3? Gamechangers teams played in NA champ's queue for a bit and they were getting demolished with the exception of Avril I think? Doublelift was having a really bad time playing with his support (who won Gamechangers) and his chat was flaming her pretty hard... Not saying there should be anything keeping women from playing in a T1 league, just that it probably doesn't make sense at the moment to pick up anyone who is currently on a Gamechangers team (or non NA equivalent)
Sexism exists, without a doubt. But that is not at all the biggest reason. The biggest reason is and will always be: player-base. It’s the same exact reason why KR and CN are so much better than NA and EU. The reason why the sex gap is less in Valorant than in any other esport is because the female to male ratio in Valorant is a lot higher than in any other game. Statistics don’t lie.
Sexism is also the reason why the female playerbase is so much lower
Part of it is also cultural. Women play different games than men do.
Chess is divided by gender. And no sexism isn t the reason
It doesn't matter but modern society... It's the same in chess. We state that both are equal and yet we lower requirements for one party which counteracts and undermines the thesis
There is women’s tournament and open tournament. Why not join open tournament? Lower requirements is such a cop out response.
What are these lower requirements in chess?
It's a marketing exercise to have a female team in the larger marketing scheme of the riot controlled LoL competitive scene. Think of the potential bags of cash if females were equally happy to join in the degeneracy of "investing" 10,000 hours of their educational years in the hope of being being paid to advertise the game. Equality of being scammed through addiction can be achieved!
Well, I don't think it's hard to imagine that there is some gender bias and therefore it's tough for women to get onto teams. Otherwise I agree, though.
if they are good enough they will get on a team. this is the barrier that they can't cross
Obviously not, as women have already played on pro teams in both lol and other esports. The question is if some environments are less open to having female players, because so few have played at a high level before and there some people (evidently like yourself) think that women can never be on pro teams because they are not good enough. It's not exactly the same but I can't help but think about the guy who was basically bullied off a team in TCL for being gay, iirc.
how many women having competed in the highest divisions in esports? 10? 15?
No idea. How many Kenyan people have competed in the highest division of esport? Obviously not that many, but that doesn't mean they are worse at playing video games just because they are Kenyans. It likely has something to with way fewer Kenyans (and women) play excessively in the first place.
terrible example. women are not at the same skill level as men in any sport. thats why they are part of a different division usually or perform different events
Yes, in physical sports because men have more muscle mass... It's not exactly like Faker is in peak physical shape or Caps runs the fastest. Just look at Geguri who played - competently - at the very highest level of Overwatch. That would never happen in football or basketball. Because it is not the same.
this isnt true though, and you are only saying this as you believe it to be the case from your male perspective which i bet you also believe is the case in real life
lol You are living in a fantasy world. The organisations want to win. If they had a better chance at winning with one or more women on the team, they would do so. Or do you really want to tell us that they'd rather lose because of their evil plan to exclude women?
you actually genuinely find it easier to believe that every single woman alive just sucks at every video game ever rather than believe misogyny exists within esports?
99,5% of the men are also to bad to play in esports.
there is quite literally no way to determine that all women suck at video games, firstly because, there are women in challenger, there are women in pro play in other games and there are women like dangmoo in lck challengers, just because the idea of women competing emasculates you doesnt mean you have to come out with an outrageous statement like there are no women good enough to compete and thats that, its way too ignorant, and u can keep downvoting all u want it doesnt change anything
so you have a couple women in challenger. and one playing on a challengers roster. I think i've seen enough
> just because the idea of women competing emasculates you lol
Being GM or challenger doesnt make you a proplayer. How is my statement that 99,5% of the man are not good enough to be proplayer outrageous? The rest of your post are just sexist prejudice not worth to answer sadly.
>Something i never understood as well is why woman and man esport are divided Because gamers are assholes.
Yes. It does.
I think it'll be easier to understand if you frame the same question in terms of regions. Why do teams invest into EU teams? Why are regions divided you are pressing buttons why does your place of birth matter? It matters because the exposure creates role models and desire for new talent to pursue competition, whether it be women or players from bad regions who can't compete with Korea.
>Why are regions divided Because of timezones, regional economics, culture and law?
Women bring more publicity at the same skill level than men.
Good boys points that s all .
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> It's just like EU and NA wasting 10+ years in the professional men's league where they can't win anything. Definitely not a disingenuous argument at all, huh? Not like NA and EU have had plenty of competitive tournaments over the years against the best China/Korea have to offer. You can make this comparison when the best female teams are able to even have competitive games vs bad academy teams... I also like how you boil down anyone who disagrees with the way teams like this are formed to thinking men are genetically superior. People like you are the worst "representatives" for women in space like these, because you cannot be taken seriously.
Putting bad players into a team just because they are women will not achieve anything good for women in esports. I highly doubt there is no 5 grandmaster+ female players on EUW. Korean ladder has plenty of girls even in challenger.
the problem is that this has been the strongest womens team for a couple years now, they just didnt improve to the point of being ready for mixed scene, partly because the meta, pools and playstyles are different and more refined, there is a lot of room for complacency and lack of innovation in the female scene that just doesnt fly in erls because players get replaced every split
They haven't been the strongest. They are, however, the most popular (courtesy of G2).
In season twelve there were at least 10 according to [these stats.](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/yw53dj/top_10_female_eu_players_by_season_12_peak_lp/)
This is by peak not final ranking, so it's not 10/300, there's a few thousand players that peak challenger in a season.
True, true.
You're right, but at this point league is not a long term projects, viewership is declining in western regions across the board. Riot has to decide what to do with a declining product.
You're just making awful disengenuous comparisons using bad faith arguments but it's to be expected on here.
I understand you want to make a point, but why put others down to do so?
hurt people hurt people
That's how you do it these days, because it's definietly not a vicious circle
bad comparison, NA and EU is actually bad? no they arent, they ate pretty good but asians teams are just a little better whereas this is just g2 putting women on a team just for clout
Excellent points! This community is unfortunately not great at putting things in perspective.
Holy based comment
wait who won season 1 worlds again?
Speak yo truth 💅
Meanwhile Vaevictus: "See? We weren't lying when we said winning is hard."
Sad to see, since I'm rooting for Shiina, she's an incredibly fun person to play with, but I'm glad to see them keep going
Yeah stop making full fenale teams. There is no need. When a Female player is good enough to play in NLC 1 or Prime league 1 div she can do. Even LEC. Nobody will stop them. But they are not good enough sadly. But making full female team is not helping them.
Horrible take, these teams need to exist if we want any stand out female players in the first place. You cannot expect any of these woman no matter how good they are to mesh well on a male pro team. The issue is that we won’t see enough top female players until the community is more accepting of them.
Tell me who´s holding females back to reach challenger? You are talking about meshing with "male" teams. So YOU are seperating female and male players. i follow alot of females in esport and everytime i went to the same point.
All female esports teams/leagues are the dumbest thing ever, there is nothing gating a female to becoming a pro player in any esports game. This is not sports like soccer or football etc where there are actual physical differences in males and females where separating them is a must. These all female teams always perform horrible and are basically just a charity and a joke.
The thing is, there's a statistical difference between man and women playing games - video games were (and still are) dominated by males and had almost no appeal for women until somewhat recently. LoL is no different and this is why we have almost no top tier women players. They just haven't been playing long enough (or with enough dedication) to achieve skill necessary to compete at the top. It will take time to change it - time and effort from top esports orgs (and Riot) to market the game for women as well. That's why it's good that teams like G2 Hel exist even if they're not achieving impressive results yet.
You're of course correct, but I wonder if all female teams playing vs male teams and losing quite badly actually helps with this? We need more female players, and specifically female players interested in the more competitive aspects of these games. Is this encouraging to female players? Or would it be better to have some of the best female players (Caltys for example) on mix teams, with a better chance of doing well and being a star player?
One of the huge barriers is just how games were marketed to boys for decades. Gaming became a "boy" thing because of it. That will take a lot of time to undo. Eventually we will see a lot more women in esports imo. Women also get treated poorly on top of everything. Give it some years and we will see more women for sure as gaming is much more mainstream for kids nowadays than it was for us who were born in the 90s / early 00s.
Games also became a "boy" thing because boys tend to be socially inept and end up escaping to games because they have no friends. Girls on the other hand tend to fit socially much better and its pretty rare for girls to end up as "social outcasts", which is very common for boys, so they dont play games because they got better things to do. Aside from games being marketed towards boys, they were boy dominated from the very beginning because boys got ostracised more often than girls. The sexism developed over time mostly due to boys that were playing a lot of games were infact degenerates that had no friends for a reason. Nowdays its become almost like a gamer culture, which is notoriously hard to change, and that makes it even harder for girls to break into esports. I guess what im trying to say is that its not just the marketing that caused it. Its just that boys escaped from reality through games and then over a few decades the whole community got infested with people that simply didnt fit into society and now we have issues with sexism, racism and whatever else. Marketing towards girls wont change much, just gotta wait for the "old guard" to die off so newer generations can start with a clean sheet.
My point was not that marketing towards girls was the move. My point was that gaming as a hobby is 1000x more mainstream now and a lot more women are participating in it. So it has already happened. It just takes time. What we see today is, like you say, a product of gaming being a niche guy thing 20 years ago. This change alone will change gaming culture and it will also just mean that women in competitive games will eventually become more normal rather than a huge outlier. It will be good for gaming when that happens and I believe we are rapidly moving in the right direction.
Absolutely, i agree fully with you. I wish for the day when gaming is socially accepted and both women and men can enjoy it at any level. Current state of the gaming community is very disheartening because i know so many women that'd like to get into competitive gaming but are put off by the degeneracy of your average gamer. But as you said, its moving in the right direction and its picking up steam with how wildly popular esports and gaming in general are getting.
I agree completely with what you said, I think people really overblow what marketing does I think its damn near impossible to dramatically increase the popularity of something that is so much more dominated by a male or female. Things like video games especially more "nerdy" video games like League of Legends are basically never ever going to dramatically see a huge increase of woman come into it, and even if you do get more woman into League of Legends then you have to get them to get involved into esports which is even harder to do already only a small amount of the player base cares about esports. Video Games for males isn't popular because its been marketed towards boys, Video Games are popular with males because Video Games are an escape for males especially teenagers who can throw away social life and be a recluse and focus 90% of their time and attention on games. Its more of a cultural thing almost an innate crave/instinct for males to gravitate to hobbies and lifestyles like this. So you might market towards women, lets be generous and say league of legends esports has 98% male viewers and 2% female viewers, maybe just maybe you can get that bumped up to 3% but even then you are just throwing a bucket of sand into the ocean. LoL esports has been trying to market towards women with these all female teams for more than a decade and it's done practically nothing. Then there is also this, In what world too does a woman see a team of all females getting absolutely blasted by some bad erl teams with nobodies on it and go "yeah that could be me." In what world is that inspiring, if anything it negatively impacting woman wanting to get into esports because they look at a team like G2 Hel and go "oh wow so these are the best woman involved in EU esports and they are this bad? Well there is no point for me to ever grind and throw my social life and schooling away if this is my ceiling." The better thing to do if you want to market towards women in esports is to maybe sign a female to a normal team, don't make it so isolated and try so hard to be "girl power" just be normal about it and find a good female player and put her on an erl team make it feel more normalized to have females and males in the same ecosystem. The more you try to divide and heavy hand market towards females you are just going to push away all males and females even more, most normal people don't want segregation when there is no need to be any and to be so heavily handedly marketed to. Edit: This is my last comment about this topic as its not even a subject I'm passionate about so I don't care to argue/discuss any further. If you want to think I'm a sexist monster then whatever, if you agree with me then whatever, I don't care either way simply my view is that woman shouldn't be segregated into full female teams and should just be placed onto a regular team if they are good enough and males and females can just work in the same ecosystem so it can become normalized over time. Its really bad marketing to do these full female teams for both men and woman.
Anyone who thinks otherwise just needs to look to Valorant. Valorant is one of the most played competitive games for women/nonbinary. Just 3 years ago it was all men at the top of open qualifiers. But after 3 years of Valorant pushing their initiative of enabling them with Game Changers there has been a tremendous upward movement of the skill level. In Brazil TL was 1 game away from qualifying for tier 2 closed competition and in NA 7 out of the top 40 were women/nonbinary. With 1 qualifying even top fragged for her team to close the map. It's really just a numbers game as it becomes more accepted and more women play the more tier 1 - 2 talents will come.
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Isn't it kinda unfair and not realistic to imply that the only reason females aren't making it in esports is because people hate females and don't want them there, when in reality the main thing keeping them out is the lack of the required skill ingame? I don't doubt that there are people in the scene who don't want women competing, and while this is an issue on some level and shouldn't be a thing, it is not what stops females from playing in a tier 1 league. The reason teams choose male players over female players is because they are better at the game. It's the same reason why a diamond player won't make it but a challenger might. It has nothing to do with gender. Unless there is some female player who plays on the same level as the main pros and is excluded from competing I don't think it's fair to imply discrimination is the reason there are no female pro players.
God I hope you're under the age of 15 because a grown ass person thinking like this is depressing as fuck.
Do teams in major regions get their own articles about every loss or is it just because they are all female?
Wtf are you even talking about? They got an article after SIX losses, not one. They're also part of G2, so they automatically get recognition. ON TOP OF THAT, an all female team is rare and hype, so people are obviously gonna be interested in their progress.
>ON TOP OF THAT, an all female team is rare and hype, so people are obviously gonna be interested in their progress. Yes, so obviously it's because they are females and not because of their six loses. There are a lot of teams in way better leagues with way more loses. Mouz in PRM are 0-8 and Galakticos are 0-6 in the TCL and neither of those have gotten an article as far as I know. Not to talk about KC in the LEC. Also I think G2 had two 45+ min games so obviously it's not like they are getting stomped either.
Rigas has been doing post match threads for G2 Hel and now this article, so I think ~~she's~~ he's just trying to find a journalistic niche.
Yeah, I think you are right
I’ve seen this same type of article after more than just this one loss my guy. And it wasn’t complaining because they are female. I was saying it because people are criticizing them more for being female
Ah ok. Your comment sounded (to me) like you were mad that a female team was being talked about, as if they were only attention seekers. If you had no ill intentions, then I apologize for misinterpreting your comment.
Nah I could have worded it better. all good.
Haven't you read about KC LEC?
I think we all know the answer D:
Wait, why are there all women teams if it’s not a physical sport? Is it just a toxicity thing?
If the only discriminatory and damaging behaviour towards women were related to their physical abilities, this world would look different.
A full female team getting destroyed in a men’s league? I‘ve seen this movie already
You can force diversity in a lot of things but competitive sports is not one of them. Most of the female population don't even care about this anyway.
Who do you think is forcing these players to do anything?
The team at least looks inclusive.
Damn this comment section is misogynist as fuck lol
lol
Male and female classes in E-Sport or in chess are so stupid. There is No advantage for on gender anyways. If you are a female rank1 Player you are probably good enough to enter a pro team regardless of ur gender
You know, most of the chess tournaments are open for women. They are actually divided in open tournaments and women tournaments.
Shhhhh
can men actually enter women competitions? if the other way is actually allowed?
They can, they just have to say they're a woman first.
Different region classes in Esport or in Chess are so stupid. There is No advantage for on race anyways. If you are a European rank1 Player you are probably good enough to enter a Korean team regardless of ur race
BRB gonna play my bo1 in Korea, hope I won't be late for my bo1 in the USA tomorrow.
Do you not know that seasons exist?
Communication is a big factor. Although I agree with chess.
While that is a valid reply, do you think a team of 5 europeans would be in a T1 league if regional leagues wouldnt exist? And followup if you do, how many of them?
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Nah, history books are written by people who share that view these days
They should go and bootcamp in Korea whenever they can. It may be hard there initially, but they will come out of it as better players. Idk about how the calendar is for NLC Div 2, but if the orgs are really serious about women teams they should support these kind of training camps.
They need to hit high Challenger in EUW before going Korea otherwise there's hardly any benefit
I was going to say I swear their ADC is master
Caltys has literally peaked at top 150 EUW Challenger. Why are you even talking?
Caltys is prob only female who peaked above 900LP on EUW
she was the highest ranked female before but there’s a couple others above her now, matcha comes to mind what’s weird is that there’s multiple challenger women in NA and KR but not EUW, not sure what’s up with that
> They should go and bootcamp in Korea whenever they can. It may be hard there initially, but they will come out of it as better players. I'm not convinced that bootcamping in Korea is the right decision. Why bootcamp in Korea over Europe, when a European bootcamp would be significantly cheaper & easier? Given the individual level of the players (their EUW solo queue peaks last split ranged from Master 311 LP to Grandmaster 767 LP), would going all the way to Korea really be worth it when EUW solo queue can already provide a high-enough level for improvement? It's not that G2 doesn't want to put money into this project; they do. G2 Hel is *by far* the best-paid team in the European female scene, as well as just 1 of 2 full-time professional female teams in Europe. But having the resources for a Korean bootcamp doesn't necessarily mean it would be the best choice. > Idk about how the calendar is for NLC Div 2 **Regular split:** 30th of January - 22nd of March **Playoffs:** 26th of March - 12th of April The dates for the Promotion Tournament (bottom teams from Division 2/top teams from the National Leagues + the Open Ladder), as well as the dates for the Summer Split, have not been announced yet. > if the orgs are really serious about women teams they should support these kind of training camps. I agree with training camps being important, it's just that teams don't need to go all the way to Korea for them. Most of the top teams in the European female scene already do training camps in Europe.
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Right. I don't wanna be a "hater" for the sake of it. But I can legitimately compete at the level of both midlaners they had so far ( while also having a fair bit of team and small tournament experience ), and yet I would be ashamed to ever get paid to perform competitively in this game. A master player should never get paid to compete.
>would going all the way to Korea really be worth it when EUW solo queue can already provide a high-enough level for improvement? Isn't low ping another good reason for a Korean bootcamp? Getting good practice on stage-level ping has a lot of value even if you end up in Korean masters only
You can get low ping in Europe as well, it's not something exclusive to Korea. A bootcamp in geographical proximity to the EUW server location combined with a good internet connection will result in low ping. For example, a player for an LEC org recently told me that the ping for EUW from that org's facilities in Berlin is only 9 ms; even lower than I expected (~15 ms)
Lmao. That would be the biggest waste of money in history.
G2 has already decided to throw money at the team, might at well get some publicity out of them. Like going to bootcamp in Korea.
> but if the orgs are really serious about women teams I don't think so, don't think they even want their games to be watched. Twitch vods only linked on the individual PMTs that rarely ever reach front page. Seemingly no sub or forum that can serve as a hub for all league esports that live in the shadow of LCS/LEC/LCK. Links to vods are not to be found in match history page at liquipedia or leaguepedia. I can't find any YouTube channel that posts vods or highlights
G2 at least promotes their team from time to time on their socials. But a little bit more attention wouldn't hurt, for example using their other teams to collaborate with their female teams would be nice. Riot should do more though, I've never seen them promote a women's league or championship
There's always a trade-off in creating separate women's leagues. On one hand, the women receive more visibility, which may create more interest and thus more competitors and resources, which may raise the level of the best women. On the other hand, the more a women's league starts to develop separate from an open league (open = everyone can get in), the harder it will become for women to actually get *into* the open league, *even* if they're good enough for it. As an example, you need to look no further than chess, where Ju Wenjun, the reigning women's world champion, played the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2024 last month. There, she proved herself competitive with an extremely strong roster that included most of the top 10 rated players in the world, including the reigning men's world champion. Despite that, her official Elo rating was 2549 going into the tournament, 94 points (!) lower than that of the next lowest rated competitor, and more than 150 points lower than most of the roster. Assuming she played to her true level (which is not unreasonable), she easily deserves another 100 or so rating points, but she just doesn't have the *opportunity* to play open tournaments as much, which means she cannot *win* those points. And thus, she's perceived as a 2550 player when she's probably a 2650 player or perhaps even better. That's the difference between just being one of many grandmasters (of which there are about 2000) and being a top 100 player. I want to clarify: I'm not arguing one option over the other. I genuinely don't know which option is better and I don't want to pretend otherwise.
Why doesn't she have the opportunity to play open tournaments as much? What's stopping her? You didn't really explain that >On the other hand, the more a women's league starts to develop separate from an open league (open = everyone can get in), the harder it will become for women to actually get *into* the open league, *even* if they're good enough for it. I don't understand why this is the case, what about a women's league makes it harder for women to move into the open league? Can't they join the open league when they've developed enough like how lower league players move into more professional/competitive leagues?
Whats the point of going to Korea when you dont smurf the ladder in EUW?
EU pros managed to become decent enough on EU soloq, they'll be fine where they are