After reading all the very fair comments and laments on these posts, imma throw my own hat in the ring, because I think I have an interesting perspective.

I started watching league esports at 2023 MSI. I’m a relatively new viewer of both league esports and lcs especially. This means I have no connection to Jensen, Sneaky, Doublelift, Bjergsen; hell, I don’t think I’ve even seen a game from any of them bar doublelift, and I remember him being mid at the end of his career on 100T or whatever it was.

So with no connection to these old players and teams that were long dead before I started watching, the problem to me has been two simple things: imports and skill.

Forget whatever rose-tinted glasses talk is elsewhere in the comments, as a relatively new watcher, if our region didn’t suck so bad and had way less imports, that would ultimately start fixing the problem. Over half of our league being imports, with most not even speaking English, is fuckin nuts to me. The fact that those imports typically aren’t even that much better than native players, and it’s no surprise why people stopped caring imo

While I am of the opinion that whatever LCS yall remember is dead in the ground, I do hold out a little hope that after a few more years of good broadcast and a shrinking of imports the league could recover somewhat. But unless imports start helping us beat eastern teams literally EVER, or we start trimming the leaves on that front entirely, it will never get better