Next year will be war.

When Counter Logic Gaming won the North American title in New York City, I found myself excited for the future of the longstanding organization and the NA LCS in general. After Cloud9 and Team SoloMid played hot potato with the trophy for almost three years, it felt like we were turning a new page and heading towards a future where teams like Team Impulse, Gravity, and even the newer Challenger teams could start building themselves up in the region.

Now, on the cusp of offseason signings and the most chaotic preseason in League of Legends history, I take back what I said following CLG's win in Madison Square Garden. The 2016 NA LCS spring split isn't simply flipping a page and moving on to a new chapter — we're throwing out the book entirely and starting a new series. Before we even see how North America's musical chairs play out in the next few weeks, I can promise you one thing: forget everything you watched in 2015 regarding the NA LCS, it's all about to change.

Currently, next year's NA LCS will begin with two sides facing off: the old school and the new money entering the scene.

On the former, we have the four teams that have played since the NA LCS' first season: Team SoloMid, Counter Logic Gaming, Team Liquid (merged with Curse), and Dignitas. The fifth team, Cloud9, can pretty much be called one of the legacy squads at this point, having played in five seasons of the NA LCS and won the championship two times. In a future where half of the league has vanished seemingly overnight, these five franchises have stayed afloat through numerous peaks and valleys.

Glancing at their opponents, we have the new kids on the block.

Firstly, we have the Los Angeles Renegades, the one new organization (if Coast does end up selling per various rumors) that will have made their way into the NA LCS by climbing up the challenger ladder. Built around a mix of veteran and rookie players, the Renegades are already different from the slew of different franchises we've seen come through the LCS' doors. They've already started building out their brand, sponsoring Australia's best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team and announcing they want to be one of the leaders in terms of taking care of their players. Branding themselves in a manner many North American traditional sport teams do with a city name attached to their team name, the Renegades have already garnered more attention without playing a single LCS game than some teams do in their entire stay in North America's premiere League competition.

Forget about importing top Korean players. Don't even think about chucking money at some hyped up European mid laner. Before any of that, the new organizations that come into the LCS next year need to learn how to build themselves as a brand. Right now, why should any person who is watching the NA LCS root for a rookie franchise? With Team Impulse and Gravity selling their spots in the league and the addition of Immortals (formerly known as Team 8), is there a point for someone to try and cheer for a team that isn't already established? Impulse and Gravity weren't bad teams by any stretch of the imagination; in their first years as organizations, they both made the postseason in back-to-back splits. If not for their former-MVP mid laner, XiaoWeiXiao, getting suspended for ELO boosting, Impulse could have easily been one of the three teams representing North America at the 2015 World Championships.

Besides Renegades and the Immortals, the other three possibly changing teams are the previously mentioned Impulse and Gravity alongside the newly reinstated Team Coast. While it might seem that less experienced franchises are giving up to try and grab a quick million dollars, that doesn't tell the story. When talking to Gravity's manager, Jake "Ginko" Fyfe, on the reason why they were putting their LCS spot up for sale, he responded with the following:

"Low and mid-ranged teams are going to have to match these new giants lest their team getting relegated. Gravity had two clear paths to choose from, and our owner’s dwindled interest in the League scene discouraged him from continuing to invest."

In short, League isn't a secret anymore. When the NA LCS is continually bringing in 250,000+ viewers every week, eyes from the traditional sports world and other investing mediums are going to start focusing in on it. We're now seeing the likes of NBA owners looking at the NA LCS and wondering if they should throw their hats into the ring to compete against the likes of grassroots organizations that have been founded by young adults without a lot of business experience. Unless you want to try and throw all your money into a fight against people with cash to burn, right now, it's a wiser decision to sell your spot before you're forced out by millionaires willing to give the best players contracts that are unheard of in the west.

In terms of individual talent, the NA LCS, if everything goes as expected, should be at the strongest it's ever been. We'll have a number of teams spending money and paying players premium amounts to come to their squad. And that's great, honestly, considering how a pro-gamer's career might only last a year before things go awry or they're replaced by some new talent from an opposing region. But, despite all the good that can come with these titans entering the arena, the thing that North America needs the most is a stabilized infrastructure. Outside of Team SoloMid and possibly a few of the other older teams like Cloud9, fans don't feel like they can trust the organization they're rooting for. It's the same in traditional sports. When a team is rumored to be in danger of selling their franchise or offloading players to save money, the interest in that team dwindles and they start looking for organizations they can feel safe buying merchandise from without the fear of them dying in three months.

Immortals, Thunder Gods, Claymores, whatever, the team name really doesn't matter. What does matter for the future of the NA LCS and League as a whole is that 365 days from now I'm not sitting here writing about Gravity selling their spot to someone else. I know that eSports aren't the same as traditional sports when it comes to its fans. In the former, it's a majority of people rooting for a single player or two instead of supporting the entire franchise, while traditional sports have specific cities they play for that create a stronger community feel. Still, if League wants to make the jump into being covered worldwide by the general media and accepted, we can't have each year ending in disarray when it comes to the teams in the competition.

Money and giving said money to top players is great. Creating a legitimate passionate fan base and connecting with them is even better.

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for theScore eSports who covers the North American LCS and Korea's Champions. You can follow him on Twitter.