Riot Games is making a loss on the League of Legends Championship Series, but is committed to the tournament series anyway.

“It’s a significant investment that we’re not making money from,” Riot Games eSports head Dustin Beck told PCGamesN at gamescom.

“It’s an investment into the game, for our fans, just like we’d invest in any other feature within the game. It’s a worthwhile thing for us to do because it’s such a high quality, engaging experience for our fans.”

The Championship Series helps elevate League of Legends from something people play to something they follow as a fan.

“We’ve mimicked what traditional sports do. We wanted to create a consistent league structure similar to FIFA, similar to MLB or NBA. What that allows for is more fandom and more storylines around players, around teams, around rivalries,” Beck said.

“What we learned from last year doing this one big tournament last year was that it was really hard for fans to have a big following or an allegiance to a specific team. Now that we’ve done this regular season and we’ve created this large platform for viewers to watch, it’s actually a more compelling, more rewarding experience for the championship.”

The full feature through the link above contains further discussion of Beck’s vision for League of Legends and eSports in general, in multiple territories.