Supercell has switched up the Clash Royale League for the new fall season

The Clash Royale League is now team based, and they've prioritised mobile

There was a whole qualification process to reach the scouting Combine

The fall season for the Clash Royale League is underway, and things are looking quite a lot different than previous Clash Royale esports competitions.

This time around, it's team based, everything feels more professional, and even the broadcast looks different.

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Rather than individual players who have risen up through the ranks, the competitors are now signed to teams. But Supercell has even changed up the way teams are recruiting players.

Last year's Clash Royale World Championship took place at the Copper Box Arena in London

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Traditionally in esports, an organisation does their scouting, and then goes out and signs the best player. For the Clash Royale League, although you can still do it this way, the process is a little more defined.

The Clash Royale League Challenge began in March this year, with the aim of finding the best players in the world. The top few hundred were invited to a Combine, an official scouting event along the same lines as in the NFL.

This gave teams a really good chance to see potential players in action. I asked Supercell's Head of Esports, Tim Ebner, more about this process.

'Over six days, 25 million unique players entered the Clash Royale League challenge, many of them multiple times,' Ebner said. 'You had to get 20 wins before getting three losses, and if you did that you could advance. It was hard because as you progressed you were matched against better and better players.

'Under 7,000 players advanced to the next stage from 113 different countries. Then online qualifiers played out over a few weeks, and we invited 50-60 from each region to the Combine.

'We wanted to give players a chance to interact with representatives from the esports teams in person and show their skills. We also wanted to give the teams a chance to scout players in a live competition environment as opposed to just online. There's more pressure, and the teams can also assess chemistry and ensure they'll fit within their organisations.'

It's been a real benefit for esports teams to recruit players who are not only extremely good at Clash Royale, but will also be able to work together well.

Some of the top Clash players were already signed to teams, while others went to the Combine

Cloud9 is one of the teams involved, and they used the Combine to bolster their squad.

'By the time we got to the Combine we had our coach and a couple of players locked in,' Cloud9's owner Jack Etienne told me. 'A lot of what we were looking for is not just brilliant players, but also with a history of being a good teammate and some synergy with out players and coaches.

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'The people we picked up before the Combine were able to help us in building the team we have. We were able to pick up some pros ahead of time and at the Combine we were able to flesh out the team with access to a bunch more players. It's a really cool system for starting up a league where there's already been a history of pro play.'

Another big change is the switch to mobile as the primary broadcast platform.

The broadcast is now portrait in some regions

'We've seen in the past year that most of our viewers are on mobile,' said Ebner. 'It makes sense when you stop to think about it because we're promoting all of our content and events in-app. So if they click on it they're going to be watching on the same device.

'We're exploring new ways to produce it. So far it means technical stuff like understanding the screen is smaller, thinking about camera angles and the size of graphics. We're also going to produce in portrait in North America and Europe.'

For those people who do watch on PCs or laptops, you'll still be able to access the stream, however you will certainly notice a difference. Depending on platform, you may see black bars down the side of the screen.

'It may not look as good as it did last year [on PC],' said Ebner. 'We're making that choice because the majority of our viewers are on mobile. It's the biggest gaming platform, and it's becoming the largest content consumption platform too. More than half of video views in the US are on mobile and that's growing.'

Supercell are also going to be focusing on tailoring the broadcast to what their audience want.

'If you're watching any livestream, the concurrents dip in between matches when people are just talking,' said Ebner. 'We're trying to minimise downtime between matches and focus on actual gameplay.

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'A lot of people watch because they're looking for decks and strategies that might help them as casual players. When we're between matches we'll emphasise more educational elements so these people can relate.'