TJ Sports Head of League Operations Brett Sun on LDL Match-Fixing 

In the past two months, China’s League of Legends esports scene has become a controversial topic in the global esports industry. On the one hand, the industry and outsiders were surprised by a $310M USD, five-year media rights deal for professional Chinese League of Legends competitions. On the other hand, however, the professional scene was also hit by multiple match-fixing scandals, which made many people question the value of that media rights deal.

Before China’s League of Legends Pro League (LPL) team Royal Never Give-Up (RNG) competed for the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) in Iceland, China’s League of Legends esports operator TJ Sports released the findings and punishments from its investigation into match-fixing accusations in the secondary league, the League of Legends Development League (LDL). Three LPL players and 36 LDL-related staff were found guilty of violating anti-match-fixing rules. 

The punishments stemming from the investigation were widely criticized by the community as being too light for professional players found guilty of rigging competitions, especially when compared to Dota 2’s Newbee lifelong bans, and South Korea’s “prison punishment” for match-fixing (South Korean StarCraft II player Lee “Life” Seung-Hyun was sentenced to 18 months in prison for match-fixing in 2016.)

On April 23, TJ Sports hosted an online conference and appointed Brett Sun, head of LPL league operations and development, to answer questions about how the company has handled match-fixing issues. The Esports Observer has summarized five key points from the conference to better understand this match-fixing investigation and what plans are being put in place by Tencent and Riot Games in China to prevent further match-fixing (To better understand the basic cause and effect of match-fixing, read this article).

“Has the punishment been more controversial than TJ Sports expected?”

Sun: “To me, it’s a bit over expectations. People think the penalty is a little light because we have set the rules for voluntary confessions this time. Those who voluntarily cooperate with the league and report violations will receive a reduction from the original penalties, otherwise they will receive heavier penalties. So you’re seeing more mitigations than aggravations. There were a number of strict penalties that we had not given lifelong bans on players before. Therefore the results were both reduced and increased.” 

“Why set the rules for voluntary confessions this time?”

Sun: “We recognized that many match-fixed players we investigated were coerced into it by threats from teams’ management. The fact is, those players are easy to manipulate or coerce because they are extremely young and do not have many social experiences. Therefore we set the voluntary confessions rule for them.”

“LDL teams do not have revenue sharing from TJ Sports and the relegation system to enter LPL. Does TJ Sports have any plans to renew the relegation system in League of Legends professional?”

Sun: “We will not renew the relegation system so far, because we’ve already chosen the franchise mode. There is a draft system every year that LPL teams can bid for fresh players from LDL. Last year we set a ￥500K RMB [$78K] bidding cap in our draft process, and we are having a discussion about whether we should cancel this regulation, in order to bring more motivation into the player market.”

“From a business and commercial perspective, how can TJ Sports bring more value to LDL teams and players to prevent match-fixing?”

Sun: “Improving the income of LDL teams and players is always what we have wanted to do for a long time. You could understand that our ultimate goal is to make LPL and LDL like the U.S. NBA and NCAA, respectively. The NCAA does not have an upward path, but it has massive commercial values.”

“From our perspective, we will bring what we have learned from LPL to LDL, optimizing our tournament structure, and packaging more contents in order to make the competition more attractive. Compared to LPL, the LDL content will be more younger-driven, targeting the theme of ‘future stars.’”

Sun also stated that TJ Sports would set more awards, such as “most valuable player,” targeting LDL players to bring more financial benefits for them.

“The investigation results involved a lot of players, coaches, and staff. Does this mean that TJ Sports did not notice some obvious issues in LDL match-fixing before? If so, what are the main takeaways that we can learn from now?”

Sun: “It’s a very intense question, and personally, I want to make an apology to all who care about League of Legends esports. We were lacking concern for supervising LDL, especially compared to LPL. The company [TJ Sports] was just founded in 2019, and we did not invest enough resources in LDL compared with what we invested in LPL.

“Generally, we will reinforce our management for LDL, and try to make LDL great. In fact, the fast-growing development of League of Legends esports in popularity and commercial value since 2018 has been beyond our expectations. The lack of judgment and right forecast might also be a reason that we did not invest enough resources in LDL, because the external attention and benefit interests could lead to a lot of issues.”

Sun emphasized that TJ Sports has “zero tolerance” policy of match-fixing and gambling behavior. “The attitude will not only exist in League of Legends but also in the further esports projects (other Riot Games’ games like Valorant and Wild Rift) operated by TJ Sports (Riot Games and Tencent).”

Source: https://esportsobserver.com/tj-sports-ldl-match-fixing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tj-sports-ldl-match-fixing