On the 6th August 2016, The first season of RLCS would start. This included 8 teams; 4 from Europe and 4 from North America. The 8 teams played through 2 qualifiers to get to the finals where the top 8 would participate in a double elimination bracket. The previous era of the RLCS included many ways for teams to get into the RLCS. In season 4, the RLRS was introduced. Similarly to VCT challengers, this was a way for teams to be promoted into the RLCS. This was where Team BDS was promoted from into the RLCS in season 9 which then led to the GOAT of rocket league winning the next worlds in 2021-22. In the previous era of the RLCS the only international tournament was the finals. The other tournaments were regionals to see who would get into finals at the end of the season. This was the premises of the old RLCS era.
During RLCS season 9, the world went into lockdown. This led to no international tournaments for season 9 and season X of the RLCS. This had disastrous effects on the competitive scene. Many organisations would drop out of the Esport over this period such as: Barcelona, Veloce, AS Monaco and Cloud 9. The scene was also impacted by the decision to only have 6 teams in the regional finals in season X. Instead of the previous 8 team double elimination, we had a 6 team hybrid double elimination bracket over 5 days. This led to some days only having one game per day, where now we have up to 8 games per day.
After COVID in 2021, the RLCS moved to an open circuit era from the standard league play previously. This meant the RLCS was annually with 3 different splits over the season (Fall, Winter, Spring) with the world championship which introduced a Swiss stage system and 3 new regions. During this period, the prize pools increased from $200,000 in 2019 to a huge $600,000 in the 2021-22 season. This brought a lot of new organisations to the RLCS making it the biggest season of RLCS of the time, both economically and in viewership. In 2019, the peak viewership was 261,359 viewers. Whereas the quarterfinal between Furia and Moist Esports (August 14, 2022) peaked at 368,721. With the huge improvement in the RLCS from 2016, is it fair to say COVID improved the RLCS scene? Or was the removal of league play and the RLRS a downside of the open era? Whilst discussions can be made for both sides, we cannot ignore the improvements in viewership, economy and overall popularity that has been developed over the years.
