Following their relegation from the league in 2016, Schalke 04 are returning to a very different EU LCS.

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theScore esports spoke to the club's new head of esports, former Splyce esports director Hans Christian Dürr, and chief gaming officer Tim Reichert about the league's overhauled 2018 format, whether Riot's frequent format changes have hurt the EU LCS and their thoughts on fellow football club Paris Saint-Germain leaving League of Legends.

What are your general thoughts on the 2018 EU LCS format?

Hans Christian Dürr: In general, I like the idea. I like the changes in the 2018 format, so just from ... I have two different points of view here. The first one is from the fan's point of view. We always thought, or a lot of fans thought that best-of-three would be so cool and it's really cool to watch and that's also what some pro players thought right? But in reality the format that we had with two groups and best-of-three, it wasn't really ideal for the viewing experience. Maybe it would give you a better answer on "is Team A really better than Team B?" because you might play two or three games instead of only one, right?

But on the other hand, it's very time consuming. So you don't really know "am I going to watch a three-game series?" So with best-of-one everything is becoming a bit easier, it's more plannable for everyone. For the fans, for Riot, for the teams and I really hope this will increase the viewing numbers. And there's also the chance that when you as a fan tune in to the stream or when you go to the studio and visit the games on site, you can watch more different teams play in one day and it gives you an overall better experience when you go there.

What do you think of the introduction of viewership-based bonuses for teams?

HCD: I mean, I understand where the idea is coming from and I think it gives teams good incentive to really make sure that they advertise the league accordingly. And it might also give them good incentive to really help making brands out of their players and maybe level up or increase their content efforts as a whole. So I think overall it's a good thing. It's good that we have this bonus on top of the already increased stipend. And I think for us at Schalke, it's not the driving force why we decided... we already decided we want to put more effort into content and want to put more effort into building brands out of the players that we've already signed or that we're going to sign. So for us this is not really an incentive, but for other teams it might be an incentive to do exactly that and rethink, "Okay, how can we help to grow the league? How can we make more people aware of the league?" Because if this is happening, at the end of the day it will be beneficial for every team participating in the EU LCS.

Tim Reichert: You can compare that a little bit to the football revenue from the DFL [Deutsche Fußball Liga]. The teams with success do also get a bit more from the revenue share the DFL is spending to the teams than the low-tier teams. So I think it's fine and should be like that. If you invest or if you be successful, even in viewership or just competitively successful, you should get an incentive for that.

What is your approach to working with Riot Games?

HCD: I always had the feeling that they are listening to feedback. If things that we wanted them to implement and they couldn't implement them, I also felt that they took the time to really make us understand why it's not possible at this moment in time. I'm not saying Riot is doing everything right, just don't get me wrong. There have been some challenges in the past obviously, but our approach is to really find the right dialogue. We see this whole thing as a partnership. We are aware as Tim already said that they are the IP owner. At the end of the day they hold all the cards in their hands. They have all the power, but I think overall we fight for the same goal which is to implement a strong league, to make sure that we have a stable and growing ecosystem in esports and also to further professionalize esports. We need to work with them and if it would be at some point where we think it's so bad for us and this partnership doesn't feel like a partnership or it's very, very one-sided, then we would probably take the consequence and just focus on other disciplines in esports. There is not only League of Legends.

Such as Paris St-Germain?

HCD: PSG has done it already, they just have a different strategy. Schalke could have said as well after one year, "Okay, we're not making it into LCS right now, so we're losing a lot of money and we're out." But I still believe you have to see League as a long-term investment. If you look at teams like G2 for example, it took them quite a while to go from Challenger Series into LCS right? And you have to give it time, you need to make sure you have the right infrastructure, you need to make sure that you have the right coaching staff, which is really, really important. And Schalke did a good job in that regard. When I signed my contract with them, they were still in Challenger Series and I had my doubts they would make it into LCS, but they had the right approach. They saw it as a long-term project and they said even if we don't make it into LCS now we will still invest into the game, we will still see what we could have done better and fortunately enough it worked.

RELATED: PSG brand director on leaving League of Legends: 'We take the risk and at the end, we need also the support of the publisher'

How concerned is Schalke with the volatility of the EU LCS?

HCD: For me, it's not really a concern. I still believe that people read too much into the teams applying to NA situation. Why would you apply to NA right? You could also just do it because you want to get some information on how the process looks like, get a bit more in-depth information once you're a bit further down the line in the process, it doesn't necessarily mean that once they accept you that you really shift all the operations and leave EU, it just means that you have another option right? I think just applying to NA doesn't necessarily mean that you don't believe in what's happening in Europe. It's just you want to have another option available. Don't interpret into that that those teams that might have applied might not believe in the European idea. Obviously with PSG, a very big player leaving the League of Legends discipline, of course that's quite a bummer for esports, but we don't know what their strategy was and maybe they just had a different strategy, maybe they thought they would be more successful in a shorter period of time. And I think League is quite volatile, but if you compare it to other Tier 1 disciplines, they're even more volatile. If you look at Counter-Strike or Dota 2, I'm not sure if League is more volatile than other top-tier disciplines where you need to spend a lot of money to maintain a top-tier roster.

TR: I really don't get why everyone is so confused that Paris stepped back from League of Legends. Honestly, if we would be in the same situation, we wouldn't have made it to LCS this split. We had to consider the same. There is no promotion next split, there is no Challenger Series next split, and for sure a club like Paris St-Germain do want to get into the LCS and don't want to play Challenger Series or domestic leagues or second division leagues and if there is no chance to get into LCS next split, there is no big reason to stay into this system at the moment. So I think this is one of the big reasons why they did that and I don't know details, but I don't think they would have stepped back if there would still be promotion to LCS next split.

What is going to separate this upcoming split from Schalke's last one in the EU LCS?

TR: I think we are way better prepared than we have been in our first LCS split. The whole infrastructure, the team around the team, is completely different, especially now with Hans at our side. We are prepared very well, very professional, we do have perfect employees here for this split so I'm really optimistic for that. It's totally different from my point of view.

HCD: I think back then when Schalke entered the LCS, it's always tough when you need to enter in-between splits, we've seen it with Mysterious Monkeys right now and with Ninjas in Pyjamas. The biggest challenge here is that you basically have to take what's still left on the market, what's not been taken by other teams. You don't have a lot of time to make sure you have the right infrastructure in place, you don't have many options you can choose from. And Schalke was in a very similar situation. But right now also, I think Tim has made a lot of advertisement within the club for esports so you have a lot more people that are really enthusiastic about esports as well and are really buying into the idea. And we have a lot of time — not too much time — but compared to the first time when Schalke entered the LCS, we have way more time to prepare for the upcoming season. We've hired the first person as the head coach, now we're looking for another really, really strong coach to be on stage and to lead the team strategically. We have more time to talk to players and to make sure that we have a good roster in place.

Sasha Erfanian is a news editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.