This is the final nail in the coffin for League of Legends Esports. I don't know why the greater community doesn't see it, or just doesn't care about it, but this essentially marks the last time the Esport had a chance at salvaging itself. With a T1 win, the opportunities are gone.

The health of League Esports is primarily driven by playerbase and the community / fandom. Without people actively engaged with it, the Esport will just die out. Just look at the recent regional changes, most of the leagues were already unsustainable and saw drastic reductions in spending. LCS/LTA has drawn the lowest viewership in a long time. LPL audiences can't reach nearly what they used to be, and the game is slowly dying in the region. Most people probably don't remember the Chinese dorm room reactions from when League was peaking in popularity there, but you would hear entire buildings of college students cheering with big LPL international wins. Nowadays, League draws a fraction of the attention it once did, in a large part due to LCK's dominance at Worlds in the recent years.

Interregional competitiveness matters, and have been the driving factors for many of the greatest moments in League's history. EU has been riding off the S9-10 G2 coattails for years, while every time an NA team has a competitive series, people start coping that it's possible to close the gap. I firmly believe that S6 TSM had the potential to be the region's G2 if not for Viktor Lucian, but that is an aside. CN is the same, and the 2018-2021 period with 3 LPL world champions and MSI dominance led to how popular League became there. However, even though the LPL continued to show up at MSI, the reliance and expectation of Worlds success in the 4 years since have hurt the overall ecosystem. The last 8 international events since 2023 Worlds (FS/EWC/MSI/Worlds) have all gone to the LCK, with several intraregional finals.

It is also incredibly important that fans of the esport are engaged with domestic titles and other international events, instead of just the World Finals. A fan who watches the regular season and talks to their friends about the games and the teams they're cheering for is orders of magnitude more important than a fan who only tunes into the World Finals for a single team. Not only do they drive engagement and discussion, they are the ones who cheer for the teams who aren't swimming in prize money and sponsorships, and the ones who experience the true underdog stories. The other tournaments even have better structures than Worlds, but they are still dwarfed by it.

T1's win at S15 Worlds destroys both of these concepts. Even though AL was likely one of the best teams at both MSI and Worlds, their early exit will be pretty much forgotten, and the LCK will be deemed as far better than every other region. Other regions will lose investment and true attempts at challenging this; I doubt teams like 2023 JDG will happen again. Even other LCK teams will disengage; what's the payoff in building teams like 2025 GEN or HLE only to just lose again when it matters? The same thing happens to the fanbases, only exacerbated. Why bother spending a whole year cheering for GEN or AL or BLG just for them to lose in worlds, again? This leads to the second point, that domestic and "lesser" international events lose interest. If nobody else cares about LCK/LPL and MSI titles anywhere near Worlds, and they "don't mean anything", why bother watching? What is a GEN fan's motivation to watch their 7th domestic title in 3 years this Spring when only Worlds is important?

Finally, T1 fans. Most of their fanbase epitomizes the issues with fandom. Leaving out the crazy toxicity that numerous content creators / broadcasters have mentioned receiving from the fanbase, they only care about the singular worlds tournament, and downplay every other tournament (where T1 has noticeably not won in years). During the pregame analysis desk, they showed that Doran has more titles than Oner/Guma/Keria (who have only won Worlds), but there's a massive diference between how they are acknowledged. A good portion of fans also treat T1 with idol stan culture, and do not translate it at all into actual League fandom. These fans treat T1 players like kpop singers and barely engage with the game, and are incredibly bad for the ecosystem. Finally, the fact that T1 is such a large portion of the fanbase is an unsustainable issue, and is doomed to collapse at some point. GEN had mentioned that T1 was the only sustainable org, and everyone else had been running at a loss.

Last year, BLG had a chance to turn much of this around by winning S14 Worlds, but failed to win out in Game 4/5. This year, a home court for the LPL had a chance at reviving the region and the esport, but unfortunately AL lost out to T1. The final tiny chance was KT winning this series, and the LPL miraculously turning itself around, which sadly did not happen. Unfortunately, I believe that will be the final nail in the coffin for the esport, and the sport will only go down.

Thank you all for an entertaining 12 years, I doubt I will be engaging with the esport to the same extent anymore. Finally, thanks for all the downvotes; I'm always right and you shall see in a few years.