The League of Legends World Championship can be one of the most exciting times of the year, especially for fans. Unfortunately, many people can get so riled up with the spirit of competition that they can get downright nasty with some of the things they say.
When an analyst or caster gives his or her opinion on a team, this can generate a ton of blowback from the specific fanbases—even though analysts are only stating their opinion. Caster Josh “Jatt” Leesman, who has taken his fair share of criticism from fans, gave his opinion on the trend.
“Beyond the obvious selfish reason of “getting flamed less,” I also don’t want this type of reaction to set the wrong types of expectations for teams,” Jatt said. “With the direction we’re going, I fear that fan favorites will just go into matches as favorites, because personalities won’t want to put up with the vitriol of suggesting otherwise.”
Jatt explained that it can be very hard for analysts to stay objective with fans hounding them every time they vote against their favorite team. He gave an example with his own analysis on this year’s Worlds, saying that for the upcoming quarterfinals matches, DAMWON Gaming was ranked higher than G2, while FunPlus Phoenix was ranked higher than Fnatic.
In response, Jatt was berated for voting against the fans. Although he said that he gave a “slight edge” to those teams, many people flamed him for his opinion. He even said that if he was younger, he would have voted in favor of the LEC teams, “because it would result in substantially less blowback.”
Ultimately, he fears that the fans will end up forcing other analysts into agreeing with the general favorites, simply to avoid the backlash that disagreeing with the favorites could come with.
