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Competitive Balance in eSports: A Comparison Between Open and Closed Leagues
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Chikish, Iuliia
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Spring 2025
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2025
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Between the 2010s and 2020s, many eSport leagues were created in the spike of popularity for video gaming, capitalizing on the newly populated community of gamers. For these leagues to be a success, matches amongst professional teams must be competitive to ensure fans are entertained. To understand the competitive nature of eSports, I analyze the league structure of the game League of Legends in NA (LCS) and EMEA (LEC) regions between 2013 and 2024, focusing on the switch from open to closed formats, comparing the competitive balance before and after franchising. The results show that the switch to closed leagues increases the within-season balance in both the LCS and LEC. However, the between-season balance has only shown improvement in the LCS and the opposite effect for the LEC.
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