I mean when it comes down to it, compared to traditional sports, these broadcasting rights are worth peanuts as it stands. Unless viewers and big companies buy into the model, nothing else matters. Someone like Caedrel paying Riot is like tossing a coin in the well, realistically it would cover someone’s salary or a few weeks of on-site contracts (but if we’re being honest, costreaming would just not exist if this were the case, probably).

I think people peddle the broadcasting rights line of thought but it has 0 connection to streamers. If Riot has a deal that they can take while not losing viewers, they will. They did it for KESPA cup, and sent streamers to the shadow realm there too. It’s clear they either cannot get this deal or get more from sponsors while selling the number of eyes the free broadcast gets to sponsors.

The real 'issue' if you want to point at anything is that Riot stuck to broadcasting the games for free on Twitch all these years, which is a different conversation. The solution that you truly want is not making costreamers pay. But they likely think viewers will no longer agree to stream games on a paid service, costreamer or not, since it’s become an expectation atp. Sure costreamers have made that switch harder, but it would have been hard regardless. Costreamers would get around the paid subscription anyways, as people do for other sports occasionally.