LCS will test Twitch subscription during playoffs

Riot Games announced on Thursday the introduction of Twitch subscriptions for the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) channel. This model is implemented as a one-month test during the LCS 2024 Summer Playoffs. This experiment comes after the announcement of the merger of all American leagues to form a single American region.

This new feature is designed to deepen fan engagement by offering a variety of exclusive perks to subscribers. These benefits include an ad-free viewing experience, which will allow the broadcast to air more content during breaks between games. Fans will also be given a subscription badge next to their name in the chat and custom emotes to use across all Twitch channels. This will also provide them an access to the chat whenever the sub-only mode will be activated, which seems to be something the league aims to use to make the chat cleaner with well-behaved fans. Subscribers also get in-game rewards as they will receive the "Brain-off" emote

The most interesting feature seems to be the access to a sub-only Discord server. Fans here will be able to interact with other subs, LCS talents and commissioners. But the most promising feature here is that subs can vote on Pro Views VODs to be posted. This gives more insightful content on the community's favorite players gameplay by being given the chance to directly look at their screen after each series.

Those features are implemented to boost community engagement and provide fans with new ways to support the league. Granting subscribers emotes, badges, an ad-free experience and an access to exclusive content, including private Discord channels, is all a part of Riot's strategy to give more power to its community of players and supporters. It is also stated subscriptions will directly impact the LCS Summer Prize Pool, with Riot Games matching 100% of the revenue earned during this short-term test, exclusively for the summer playoffs.

This trial will allow Riot to measure how interested can fans be in such features. For sure, lessons will be taken and we can expect some of these to be kept in the future and launched in other regions as a way for them to keep the community engaged in their competition.