Produced | People's Esports
The author | Lu Wenzheng
Edited | Kevin
"The Challenger Cup is not just a name change, it reflects our strategic thinking. We are very determined to create a national e-sports system, the positioning of the Challenger Cup is to let players at different levels have a stage for the same competition, which is also the embodiment of the concept of national e-sports. ”
Zhang Yijia, general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment Tianmei E-sports Center, head of King glory e-sports and chairman of KPL Alliance, said this before the start of the Challenger Cup final.
In the end, the Wuhan eStarPro team defeated Guangzhou TTG again with a score of 4:1 to win and lifted the Ice Phoenix Cup.
The 2021 of The Glory of Kings Esports: Format Innovation and Comprehensive Regionalization of City Naming
Standing at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, looking back on the past year, the development of the King glory e-sports competition can be called "a hundred feet pole, further".
First of all, the reform of king glory in the competition format is obvious to all.
Previously, we released a format upgrade for the World Champions Cup: next year, the number of world champions cups will be increased from 12 to 16; local teams and players in Asia, North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and other regions will be selected to attack the champions trophy through layers of selection; the new version of the event will choose the glory of the king and the glory of the king international version (AoV) the common heroes of the two sides to integrate to ensure the fairness of the competition.
The upgrade of the World Champions Cup aims to improve the top world stage in the Glory of Kings esports competition system.
As for the upgrade of the Winter Champions Cup to the Challenger Cup, it is to make the national and comprehensive stage bigger and wider, and to further penetrate the concept of "national e-sports".
In the Challenger Cup, we saw the K League team, but also saw the Shenzhen Penguin MD from the King of Glory National Competition, as well as the KPL professional team. The presence of different teams on the same playing field gives secondary league and non-professional teams a chance to challenge professional teams.
Secondly, in terms of regionalization, the KPL alliance is also in the first echelon -
After the official announcement of VG landing in Xiamen in September 2021, all 16 clubs with fixed seats in the KPL Alliance have completed the regional city title, becoming the first e-sports alliance in China to fully complete the regional title.
"We see that the effects and results brought by the whole regionalization are very good, and the KPL is the first league in the history of e-sports to truly achieve full regionalization nationwide." With the development of regionalization, it can also connect urban culture very well, including helping the industrial development of more cities. We also hope that the regional strategy can serve as a seed to develop a more complete industrial chain nationwide. Zhang Yijia said.
How much room is there for imagination in the "sinking market" of e-sports?
"E-sports for all" has become a hot word in today's e-sports industry. If e-sports wants to go to the whole people, it must be inseparable from the vast number of e-sports users in third- and fourth-tier cities and even small counties.
If you only look at the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and many new first-tier cities, the vigorous development of e-sports is no longer necessary.
However, if you want to look at third- and fourth-tier cities and even counties and villages, the development of the e-sports industry is still obstructed and long.
In the "sinking market" public cognitive dimension, there is no essential difference between the concept of e-sports and playing games, which is an obstacle to the objective environment of "e-sports for all".
As for the ecology, the "sinking market" rarely has the leading enterprises to form e-sports clubs, and there are very few qualified event organizers and operators.
When the "Matthew effect" appears, the resources of e-sports will be concentrated in those areas where e-sports are better developed, the strong are always strong, and the weak can only become weaker.
Therefore, if you want to bring e-sports into the "sinking market", you need someone to stand up.
So we have seen the Glory of Kings K League, the Glory of Kings National Competition, and the Glory of Kings National Women's Open Tournament and other e-sports competitions with low or even no thresholds. The king glory e-sports competition system covers the whole people, which gives the "sinking market" a chance to develop, and also gives those "grassroots players" who dream of engaging in the e-sports industry a chance.
A month ago, when XYG reached the final four of the autumn finals as a new KPL army, people said that they had a temporary seat in the KPL in the autumn tournament. Three days ago, when XYG won the "Win the Cheer" award at the annual festival and stood in the spotlight again, some people will remember that these young people who played well in the autumn games were once one of the thousands of "grassroots players" in the "sinking market" of e-sports.
Dark Horse Counterattack is always the most touching and applaudable sports story, XYG is an example of "unprecedented" in the KPL league, but it must be "a latecomer".
The non-KPL pro league teams in the Challengers Cup, although they were not able to take even a small point from the strong this time, they at least had a chance to face the strong.
After creating an event system covering the whole people and exploring the "sinking market", the king glory e-sports upgraded the winter champions cup to the challenger cup, giving the "sinking market" another opportunity to step onto a bigger stage.
Admittedly, the big winners of the Challengers Cup in the coming years will still be professional league clubs, and in the final stage of BO7, there is almost no probability of amateur players winning.
But if a certain Challenger Cup, at the beginning, there is a team that no one knows about the professional team, such a story may be more worthy of being remembered than the strong team winning the cup again.