Since its debut, Rocket League has fulfilled a very niche role in the gaming world. The esports sport, as some may call it, resembles real-life physics and digital competition like no other title can.
That’s why the official competitive skyrocketed to internet success soon after release, taking the first studio shows around the globe in the first LAN World Championships. To qualify, teams had to outperform their region in a now-extinct format called league play.
Here, orgs would face off against each other in a fixed schedule, allowing the players with the best records to move on to the next stage, very similar to traditional sports like football and soccer. It wasn’t until the pandemic that organizers Psyonix had to take a different approach.
In 2020, RLCS X focused solely on online competition, gradually expanding the number of regions, prize pools, and play time. To incentivize an influx during a LAN-less season, the door was slammed open to any and all players looking to become pros, abandoning the invitational and league play formats for good.
The problem lies in the speed of play rather than the speed of players. Gone are the days when anticipation built around specific match-ups. Where derbies could get hyped online. Where trash talking had a time, a place, and a target.
In a fleeting format like Open Quals and Open Tournaments, teams come and go so quickly that it’s difficult to even wrap your head around narratives from a viewer’s perspective, let alone a player competing in three or four best-of series in the span of three hours.
And yes, while the Open format is quite literally more eventful, crowning champions every Sunday from all over the world, League Play is easier to follow for both players and fans. The traditional weekly game format made it easier to translate for non-esports followers, who are now lost when their favorite teams don’t even make the main event due to an off-stream elimination.
The absence of narrative between weeks, teams, and players has led to a significant drop in interest among long-time fans, with some blaming the oversaturation of Rocket League over a three-day span and others crediting the format's lack of substance.
This decline in interest has consistently driven viewers away over the past three years, a trend set to continue as we enter a 2026 season most rocketeers weren’t aware of kicking off last year. There’s so little time between events, regardless of tier, that it’s baffling and disrespectful, even to the very best in the world.
The reigning World Champions, NRG, won the big one on September 14, conquering the top of the esport for North America for the first time since their 2019 title. This monumental moment was short-lived, as their most recent showing in the 2026 season landed them a Top 12 result on November 21, only 68 days after lifting the trophy, successfully deflating their Worlds dub and resetting bragging rights, interrupting victory laps, and adding an asterisk to their GOAT performance.
The sooner organizers want us to move on from results, the sooner viewers and players stop caring about them altogether. Soon, fans will choose to stay up to date online and follow the action relatively closely until LANs come back around, signaling less of an audience for regular-season Opens.
Fewer viewers will mean fewer sponsors, which means less money and less allocated resources, something Rocket League can’t afford to lose as player counts drop more each passing year under Epic Games’ administration.
Unlike Fortnite, Rocket League has not had groundbreaking updates with household IPs that make old players rush back to the servers. The largest and most efficient hook is the RLCS and the grind to play better, both of which are currently unattended by Psyonix and Epic alike.
The return to league play is imminent if saving the esport is in order. One series a week per team to build narratives, hype matches up, know players better, and establish pecking orders to spark conversation. I'm tired of pretending I know what I'm talking about when things already go so fast.
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