Co-streaming and official broadcasts: League of Legends Esports' community discusses

For years, co-streaming has been one of the most transformative yet controversial additions to esports broadcasting. In scenes like League of Legends, it opened the door for creators to bring their own audiences into official matches and reshape how fans consume the product. But alongside that growth came an ongoing question: is co-streaming expanding the ecosystem, or quietly eroding the value of the main broadcast?

On one hand, co-streamers drive massive engagement, often pulling in viewers who might never tune into official channels. On the other, the then fragmented audience weakens the main product — the official broadcast — by siphoning viewership and raising concerns around sustainability.

And this debate reignited once more this past few weeks, in April 2026, sparked by new rules for Counter-Strike co-streaming, an LCS organisation’s video, and followed by a lot of reactions from across the LoL Esports community.

With this article, we hope to explain the timeline of events and document most points of discussion on whether co-streaming is good, bad, or just needs stricter rules.

On April 10th, ESL published a new set of co-streaming guidelines. In their own words, the goal was to build “a shared vision for the future of ESL,” one where co-streamers act as an extension of the broadcast while helping “protect the ecosystem itself” through proper sponsor visibility and professional conduct.

In short, co-streamers are expected to act professionally, avoid controversial topics, and actively moderate their chats. They must use the official ESL broadcast feed, stream on approved platforms — like Twitch — and clearly reference the tournament in their titles. But the most controversial change was the introduction of what ESL calls “Always-On Coverage.”

Under this rule, co-streamers are expected to follow the broadcast from start to finish without interruption. They can’t tab out to other content, switch to different games, or drift into “Just Chatting” while the event is live. The official feed must remain visible and audible at all times, with strict limits on overlays, which subsequently also protects the official broadcast’s sponsors. ESL’s branding, ads, and integrations must remain fully visible and untouched while co-streaming, and streamers face tight restrictions on promoting their own sponsors — especially in overlapping categories.

In the Counter-Strike community some saw the new rules as reasonable as they ensure that co-streamers don’t “cherry pick” content, but others worried the rules would limit flexibility and make co-streaming less appealing.

As more members of the CS community continued to discuss the changes, host Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere shared ESL’s announcement and added that the new rules should be “the standard for all co-streamers across esports.” As Sjokz is best known for her longtime work on LoL Esports’ broadcasts, the League community entered — or more exactly re-joined — the discourse.

So while ESL’s announcement started the conversation, it didn’t stay contained in one esport space and within days the discussion spilled into the League of Legends community where co-streaming has also become a staple of the possible viewing experience. On April 17th FlyQuest released a video, in collaboration with content creator Walter "turndownforwalt" Brandsema, examining the role of co-streaming in League esports.

The video began by mentioning viewership data of past international LoL Esports events where co-streamers accounted for nearly half of the watch hours — during Worlds 2024 — with regional leagues seeing anywhere from roughly a third to over 70% of their viewership coming from co-streams during the same event. More viewers, more reach, more engagement should lead to a positive outcome, but the video challenges that projection by asking whether co-streamers are actually building fans of the esport or just “creating more fans of their own streams.”

The currently named “The Hidden Cost of Co-Streaming in Esports” video frames the current situation by looking back at how co-streaming became so central in the first place, tracing its rise to the early 2020s when venture capital money was pouring into esports and organizations were under constant pressure to show growth, often prioritizing bigger numbers over long-term sustainability. In that environment, leaning into content creators — and by extension co-streaming — became an easy and effective way to rapidly boost viewership, even if it meant giving up a significant amount of control over how the broadcast itself was presented and consumed.

According to the video, this trade-off didn’t come without consequences, and much of its argument hinges on the idea that while co-streaming succeeded in driving short-term growth, it may have simultaneously weakened the foundation of the esports ecosystem.

As creators began to take on a larger role, the influence of the official broadcast diminished, and teams — many of which had invested heavily in creators — often struggled to translate those audiences into loyal fans, thus leading to situations where, as the video describes, large sums of money were spent on deals that ultimately failed to deliver sustainable returns.

“Deals with content creators that were focused on big numbers in the short term rather than building community in the long term were the problem. But the shifts in the ecosystem can't be undone. And we're not going back to the pre 2021 world anytime soon. That means it's everybody's responsibility to find ways to integrate content creation into esports in ways that go beyond chasing that bigger number,” said the video.

As soon as FlyQuest’s opinions were put into the open, the League community exponentially got drawn into the discourse.

Over the past few days, a fragmented — and often contradictory — discussion from parts of the LoL Esports community latched onto different aspects of the co-streaming topic.

One major line of argument focused on broadcast integrity and fairness. Some people echoed the idea that co-streamers benefit heavily from Riot’s production without giving enough back, especially when they don’t fully engage with the broadcast. This aligns with ESL's new philosophy introduced through the guidelines days prior: if co-streamers are going to use the product, they should at least fully show it.

“Watching the broadcast in its entirety should be the bare minimum requirement,” Matt Samuelson, currently caster for NACL, said on X before later adding that the real issue is how co-streaming has turned the broadcast into “a white labeled product handed out for free to bigger creators.”

Some argue that the problem isn’t co-streamers taking value but the ecosystem failing to capture it properly. From this perspective, the issue is less about behavior and more about business structure, and suggestions, like licensing models quickly, were quickly offered. To “require licensing per size of stream” from co-streamers is a solution also mentioned by former Sheep Esports journalist Arsh Goyal, who also pointed out how co-streamer’s revenue is “inexorably tied to the quality of Riot’s core broadcast, with thousands of dollars in production tools helping optimize the viewer experience, entirely for free.”

But a significant portion of the community pushed back against the idea that co-streaming is inherently harmful by framing it as a natural response to how audiences consume content today.

From this perspective, co-streamers aren’t pulling viewers away from the ecosystem but they’re keeping them within it, just in a different format. Mel Capperino-Garcia, who works at Riot and has been involved in influencer programs for years — and has explicitly clarified she was sharing her personal opinion, not Riot’s — argued that co-streaming has “only slowed the viewership decline we see in esports, not sped it up.”

Some viewers simply prefer personality-driven content, and in Capperino-Garcia’s view, removing co-streaming would not convert those viewers back to the main broadcast, but rather push many of them away from the ecosystem entirely. She also highlights the broader media trends, mentioning how younger audiences increasingly gravitate toward react-style content and short-form formats, arguing that co-streamers are currently better positioned to capture and retain those viewers than official broadcasts.

At the same time, a lot of the conversation shifted toward the broadcast itself, as for many, co-streaming isn’t the problem but rather a symptom of it — a reflection of what the main product is currently lacking. In short, people are choosing co-streamers over official broadcasts because they find them more entertaining. Whether it’s stronger personalities, more direct insight, or just a more relaxed tone, co-streams are offering something the main broadcast currently struggles to deliver, especially after years of production cuts from TOs.

But even among those who see value in co-streaming, there’s a growing sense of caution about where this trend leads long term. Several industry figures raised concerns that the current system may be propping up impressive headline numbers without actually strengthening the foundations underneath. The fear here is not about today’s viewership, but tomorrow’s sustainability — especially if audiences become more attached to individual creators than to teams, leagues, or even the game itself.

Alex “Nymaera” Hapgood, freelance caster, captured that concern directly by describing co-streaming as “short term gain in trade for long term instability,” while also warning that inflated numbers driven by creators don’t necessarily translate into lasting value for the ecosystem. From that point of view, co-streaming seems like a “short-term boost” that risks creating long-term instability, particularly if the ecosystem becomes too dependent on a handful of personalities to carry engagement.

And even taking all of these opinions and factors in mind, there is still a lot left out to keep in consideration when talking about co-streaming. The League audience is getting older, Riot’s approach to its product is changing, and “the esports audience” behaves differently depending on the region.

Still, co-streaming sits in that complicated middle ground where all sides benefit from the current structure, even if they don’t fully agree on its long-term consequences. Co-streamers gain direct personal returns, TOs gain reach, and audiences get diverse contents to choose from, but this shared success also diffuses accountability, leaving the question of responsibility almost impossible to solve.

The co-streaming debate is ultimately being used as a proxy to discuss much deeper issues, no matter the ecosystem in question. Monetization, audience behavior, and the overall identity of the product are just topics that cyclically keep resurfacing from time to time. If we consider this context, co-streaming starts to look less like the root of the problem and more like one piece of a much larger industry shift.

The debate gained even more traction because one of the biggest co-streamers in the League ecosystem was directly pulled into it. Marc Robert “Caedrel” Lamont became a central figure after his face was used as the thumbnail for FlyQuest’s video and his name was referenced in its description, which many felt effectively positioned him as the example of the issue being discussed. Caedrel himself had acknowledged the situation on one of his streams, saying he might respond with a video of his own, but before that could happen, the ongoing discourse began to spill directly into his live broadcasts.

During one of his recent LEC co-streams, the situation escalated to the point where he ended his stream early. After going offline mid-broadcast, Caedrel wrote in his chat after the atmosphere had seemingly become overwhelmingly negative, saying he would disconnect for the day and return later in the week — but the moment quickly became a focal point in the wider conversation.

Some defended the decision, arguing that the discussion had gone too far and turned into personal attacks rather than constructive criticism, especially with also other creators being singled out. Others, however, saw it differently, suggesting that stepping away mid-stream only reinforced the criticisms being made, framing it as a “shitty overreaction” — as French streamer MiraiPanda said on X.

However, several figures in the scene also spoke up in defense of Caedrel as the situation escalated, pushing back against how much of the discourse had centered on him personally. Streamer and Cloud9 coach, Christian “IWDominate” Rivera openly criticized the FlyQuest video, calling it “clickbait” and accusing it of misrepresenting creators while ultimately promoting its own. Others echoed similar sentiments, like Simon "Baus" Hofverberg, going even further in defending the co-streamer by arguing that without Caedrel “League esport would be dead, in the ground, in the EU.”

What this whole situation leaves the community is less answers and more tension. Co-streaming is, at the same time, a tool that helps sustain viewership, an signal of where the official broadcast is falling short, and a product that could create long-term risks if the ecosystem becomes too reliant on it.