Fans of the LEC are calling out the broadcast for long pauses between games, with technical issues and game interruptions “ruining” the viewing experience for fans.
The LEC has gotten off to a rocky start, with viewership being lower than the prior year, and technical issues exhausting viewers as well as the people on the broadcast team.
While many of these problems are set to be addressed by the LEC in the future, some viewers are claiming the problem is with the broadcast itself.
A Reddit thread that’s gained traction claims that, even without technical issues, the downtime is too long and that they have a hard time staying invested in the day’s games.
LEC fans call out lengthy broadcast delays
With the LEC coming back for the first time in months with a ton of changes to League of Legends since players last set foot in the Berlin studio, there were bound to be at least a few technical issues.
However, the first LEC weekend was rough, with tech problems delaying more games than they didn’t. It took much longer than anticipated for matches to play out. This led to casters and other broadcast crew doing their best to fill time, but some viewers are claiming that they had a hard time staying invested.
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MonteCristo, a prominent figure in the LoL community and former caster, mirrored these complaints in a tweet thread claiming that watching matches live is “grotesquely inefficient” in comparison to catching up on the day’s games by watching VoDs later.
Caedrel has responded to all the criticism levied toward the LEC broadcast on his Twitch stream, Sjokz addressed the situation in a tweet saying that it was “bringing me down a bit that lots of people are saying they hated the downtime content”, and a picture of Quickshot laying behind the casters’ desk was posted after the incredibly long broadcast on the first day of LEC competition.
Mood pic.twitter.com/Q7tYCC9zrC
— Tom Matthiesen (@TomMatthiesen) January 21, 2023
Caedrel’s response went the most in-depth on the situation and what it’s like to work on the broadcast while they’re dealing with technical issues. “Do you think we’re intentionally trying to delay the game for content? We’ll do a pre-game, we’ll do a post-game, and we’ll do an interview. That’s it. We’re not gonna take that much time. We’re just there to buy time and make content.”
He also claimed that a certain unnamed brand of peripheral wasn’t working properly with the LEC computers, leading to players having to reset their settings on either their mouse or keyboard. Even one player having an issue of this nature could cause a delay.
While the LEC broadcast team have apologized for all the delays and have promised to improve the viewing experience going forward, it seems that some LEC fans are running out of patience.