With baited breath, League of Legends fans watch as PaiN Gaming wins a team fight against their opponent, Flash Wolves. PaiN is about to win its first game at the World Championships. Fans from PaiN’s native Brazil, however, are having a different experience—they’re busy switching in vain between various streaming services like Twitch and YouTube. The massive audience has choked Brazil’s servers, and many fans are stuck trying to figure out why their “high definition” stream suddenly looks grainy and unfocused. Instead of watching their home team win, they’re just trying to watch the game.

This isn’t the first time Brazilians have turned out in large numbers to watch their favorite games and streamers. Their favorite players, like Felipe “YoDa” Noronha, the Portuguese-speaking midlaner for CNB e-Sports Club, are among the most-watched streams on Twitch. “Brazil is one of the fastest growing regions,” explains Chase, PR director at Twitch. To catch up with the growing demand in Brazil, Twitch opened new servers in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro three months ago. But, as evidenced from the World Championships streaming problems, that’s still not enough.

“I believe that we are yet to see the peak of this hill”

The Brazilian eSports scene is seeing an incredible growth in many areas. Brazilian eSports websites, for example, have seen views skyrocket—Lolnews.com.br, for example, has seen site visits grow from 100k to 1.3 million in less than a year.

The same has happened at LegendsBR.com. “There are periods of lower and higher growth, but it always goes forward,” explains Felipe Grilo, the editor-in-chief of the fan-site. In the last few months, his website has reached peaks of 800k monthly visitors. Grilo expects these numbers to keep growing, “I believe that we are yet to see the peak of this hill”.

Riot Games’ virtuous circle

Websites aren’t the only thing heating up in Brazil. Above, 14,000 League of Legends fans were treated to a rock show complete with on-stage flamethrowers preceding the CBLOL finals. The Brazilian public didn’t need that much, though, to get hyped for the national final between PaiN Gaming and INTZ in Allianz-Park, São Paulo. The Tearful Amumu video playing on gigantic screens was all it took rile up the audience. Riot showed once again how good they are at organizing eSports events—tickets to the Allianz-Park sold out in under an hour.

Since Riot Games opened the Brazilian server for League of Legends in September 2012, the importance of the game in the eSports scene hasn’t stopped increasing. At every CBLOL final, Riot beats its own previous record of attendance and concurrent viewers on stream.

The Brazilian teams that make it into CBLOL have an unprecedented opportunity to play in front of a nation of fans. Riot Games has invested hundreds of thousands into Brazil’s eSports market. Teams now receive salaries from Riot and do not have to depend on sponsor money to survive. That added security has allowed teams to focus on what matters—playing well—and they’re starting to challenge the rest of the world.

While the stability of the nation’s League of Legends scene is admirable, fans of other eSports games are starting to draw comparisons. And what they’re noticing is a massive gap in how they are being treated.

The Brazilian eSports Gap: “There is the public, but not enough investment.”

“We noticed a 20 to 30% increase in players, all games considered”, explains Daniel Ciesla, regional head of staff at ESL Brazil. League of Legends is the most played game, followed by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. “But the players are spreading to new games: Dota 2, Smite, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone…”

According to KeyD Stars’ manager, Edu Kim, when asked after the CBLOL final in August, he said, “Counter-Strike will be bigger than League of Legends within 6 months.” But the CS:GO community cannot count on Valve’s investment like League’s does Riot’s. When asked about CS:GO’s possibilities in Brazil, Kleber Fonseca, owner of CNB, is doubtful: “I believe it will be difficult. The community will be there, but it will never become huge. There is the public, but not enough investment.”

Ciesla also deplores the lack of investment in CS:GO: “Despite being the second-most played game, Counter-Strike has no tournament with cash prizes [in ESL Brazil] while other games like Smite do. In Counter-Strike, we need sponsors and teams with their own servers. It makes things a lot more complicated.”

To get around the lack of investment in Brazil, teams dreaming about a professional career are moving to other regions. Last year, the KeyD stars sent their CS:GO lineup to compete in the ESEA North American league. They qualified for the world final and reached the top 8. But the team was later recruited by an American organisation, Luminosity Gaming. This year, the main Brazilian event in CS:GO, “Golden-Chance,” was organized by Games-Academy. Instead of cash, however, the team that finished in first simply got a chance to compete in North America for the next season of ESEA.

The level of excitement and involvement in eSports in Brazil is extremely high. Now, it’s time for investment and attention from game developers match. League of Legends is doing great, but the rest of the scene seems like more of a missed opportunity. There is a gap, and until it is fixed, the future of Brazilian eSports is unclear—just like our attempts to watch the League of Legends World Championships.