Chapter 18 Sunday, March 18th

At the Tuwei Live iCL League broadcast booth, three commentators, dressed in suits and wearing headsets, chatted idly while sorting through the various data materials on the table.

The match was still ten minutes away from starting, but the three commentators were already in place, ready to begin today's performance.

Yesterday, Chen Yufeng took a trip to FV Club and selected two of the most eloquent and popular livestreamers, recommended by Wu Yue, to serve as commentators for today's match.

These two players were originally on the second team of the FV squad. Although their skills were good, the five players on the first team were too strong, and they didn't have many opportunities to rotate into matches.

Moreover, they were getting older. Due to declining reaction times and energy levels, they were increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of professional competition and had been struggling with their future career paths.

This commentary opportunity was a good trial run for both Tuwei Live and the two players.

If it went well, they could continue commentating. If not, the two players could consider returning to professional play or simply retiring and becoming full-time livestreamers.

Since it was their first day commentating, they might not be very experienced, so a seasoned on-stage commentator from the GP League was arranged to guide them. Although this on-stage commentator didn't have a deep understanding of *IOI* (Imitation Online game), he was very good at managing the flow of commentary. With him there, the three wouldn't get off track.

This morning, while the two new commentators were cramming and practicing their teamwork, the official staff at Tuwei Live obtained firsthand information about the competing teams—a dozen or so pages of data—and provided it to the on-site commentators.

This data included the players' favorite heroes, common tactics, and some detailed habits, providing excellent data support for the commentary. Combined with the game knowledge of the two active professional players, they would surely be able to uncover more details about the match.

In addition, each of the three commentators had a tablet computer in front of them, on which a dedicated team would provide real-time updates on other match-related content, such as the distribution of kills on the map, first blood occurrences, economic trend lines, and more.

This data came directly from the Longyu Group's backend, using the same system as the real-time data that would soon be launched on various platforms.

Although the packaging wasn't yet complete and couldn't be shown to the audience, it was perfectly fine for the three commentators to see it. They were all professionals and could easily understand it.

With all the preliminary work completed, Tuwei Live had also done enough promotion and hype for this unofficial commentary stream on its own website. Now, it all depended on the commentators' on-the-spot performance after the match began.

The two professional players were a little nervous.

One of them had commentated on matches in his own livestream before, but that was a very personal environment. Even if minor problems arose, only his own fans would see them and wouldn't be too critical.

But now, they were commentating in a very formal setting. Even a slip of the tongue would be picked on, and a professional error could "ruin their reputation," so they were both a little apprehensive.

The experienced on-stage commentator in charge of managing the flow smiled and said, "We've rehearsed several times this morning, so don't be nervous. I'll be in charge of managing the flow and guiding the discussion. Just follow my lead. If you're worried about saying the wrong thing, I'll say a sentence, and you can follow up."

The two professional players nodded, and as the broadcast was about to begin, they quickly straightened their ties and hairstyles and looked towards the camera.

...

At the same time, a large number of viewers flooded into Tuwei Live, ready to watch the iCL League.

After distributing the broadcasting rights for the iCL League, the number of viewers on Tuwei Live didn't drop significantly. Instead, it basically stabilized!

This was mainly due to the impact of the previous "spoiler incident," which had given many people the impression that "Tuwei Live is faster than other platforms."

Although the broadcast times on all platforms were now synchronized, and even if there were delays due to network issues, they wouldn't exceed two or three seconds, the initial impression, once formed, was difficult to change.

Of course, after learning that other platforms were in sync with Tuwei Live, these viewers who had come to Tuwei Live were gradually returning to various platforms.

But this return ultimately took time, and some viewers had already formed the habit of subconsciously opening Tuwei Live whenever there was a tournament. In the end, a portion of the viewers would still stay.

Today, many long-time viewers discovered that the Tuwei Live iCL League livestream room was divided into two channels by default. After entering, the default was Tuwei Live's own livestream, and the second was the official livestream!

Moreover, Tuwei Live had already promoted and hyped its own livestream.

Tuwei Live had already given the iCL League a lot of recommended resources, but now these recommended resources had been changed. Although they were still promoting the iCL League, the focus of the promotion had been placed on Tuwei Live's own livestream.

Most viewers didn't pay too much attention to this. After all, many esports tournaments had featured second streams, which were just streamers providing secondary commentary using the official match footage. There was nothing new about it.

These second-stream commentators were often streamers who used their own style to attract their fans. In terms of professionalism and viewing experience, they couldn't compare to the official stream.

This was normal, after all, the official stream's commentators were carefully selected professionals with good eloquence, who could also get firsthand information from the official sources. Even if their game knowledge was slightly lacking, they could make up for it with other advantages.

In short, most viewers saw the related promotions but didn't pay too much attention to them.

But since the Tuwei Live livestream room for the iCL League defaulted to Tuwei Live's broadcast, most viewers stayed to see how Tuwei Live's broadcast differed from the official stream.

After the iCL League's promotional video was played, the broadcast booth appeared on the screen.

The three commentators were dressed in suits, sitting upright, wearing the same commentary headsets, with a stack of materials, a pen, and a tablet computer on each of their desks.

In contrast, the official iCL League commentators were only wearing shirts, and their desks were empty, with nothing on them.

"Hey, isn't that the GP League commentator?"

"The two next to him... are they members of the FV team's second team?"

"That suit is pretty cool."

"Why are there so many things on the table? There's a notebook, a pen, and a tablet computer?"

"It looks like they're very well prepared!"

"Oh, they're going to analyze match data!"

The match hadn't officially started yet. The players from both teams had just appeared on stage, and there were still a few minutes for equipment testing.

On the official livestream, the director began to release some data about the two teams in order, such as the win rate when leading in the first ten minutes, the number of times players were named MVP, historical data of matches between the two sides, and so on.

The official commentators were basically just reading the data, only occasionally adding some simple explanations, such as a high first blood and first turret win rate indicating that the team was good at gaining an early advantage and snowballing to victory, and so on.

But at the Tuwei Live broadcast booth, the three commentators were looking at the materials in their hands and explaining content that wasn't even mentioned on the livestream.

"We see that the official stream gives a first turret win rate of 74%, but this data isn't particularly accurate. This team has several different tactical strategies. One is a fast-push, resource-trading strategy, which leans towards the hero selection for the bottom lane. Under this strategy, their first turret win rate actually reaches over 90%, indicating that they're very familiar with this tactic. In other tactical strategies, their first turret win rate is only over 60%, and they often fail to get the first turret and fall behind early."

"This shows that the fast-push tactic is this team's most mature and effective strategy. This time, the opponent should make corresponding adjustments to their lineup to counter this tactic..."

Sure enough, before the words were even finished, the opponent had already banned two bottom lane heroes as countermeasures.

Not only that, during the ban/pick process, the two professional players were as if they had a script in advance, accurately predicting the heroes that both sides would pick next. When they were unsure, they would provide two different options, inevitably hitting one of them.

Since these tactical systems were in the knowledge reserves of the two professional players, they could be easily picked out. Not only could they accurately predict the lineups of both sides, but they could also extend the discussion to give a simple introduction to the tactical approach of the lineup.

In contrast, the official commentators were only deducing and guessing the tactics that both sides would adopt in this game based on the characteristics of the heroes after they had already been selected.

If you only watched the official commentary, there would be no problem, because the commentators did a good job of explaining and describing. But as long as you compared them with the two professional players on Tuwei Live, the content of the two commentaries was immediately obvious!

The barrage was already filled with various 666s (internet slang for "awesome").

But this wasn't the end. After entering the game, the gap between the two sides was further reflected.

The two professional players on Tuwei Live gave detailed explanations of the early tactical arrangements, including why the early wards should be placed in a specific location, how multiple players dismantling a ward could gain experience faster and reach level 2 to achieve online suppression, and the junglers' farming routes and farming speed...

It could be said that every detail of the players' performance couldn't escape the commentators' eyes.

Tuwei Live's observer (oB) was also different from the official oB.

The official oB kept giving online shots, but both sides were playing relatively stably, occasionally trading hits, and not missing too many last hits. The commentators didn't have much to say, only uttering "Good last hit, very solid fundamentals" after a player perfectly last-hit a wave of turret minions.

The Tuwei Live oB, on the other hand, at the request of the two professional players, gave the main shots to the heroes in the jungles of both sides in the early game and opened to view the specific data of the heroes.

Many viewers were confused. What was so interesting about farming?

But the two professional commentators quickly gave an explanation: One of the players' farming details were very poor, and the speed was 5 to 8 seconds slower than other top players. The other player had obviously done his homework in advance and had anticipated this, so he deliberately farmed one less group of monsters and went to ambush the opponent's jungle early.

Sure enough, half a minute later, the two junglers encountered each other. The one who farmed faster waited leisurely for the other, directly beating the opponent into a weakened state and forcing him to retreat, then comfortably eating all of the opponent's jungle monsters, establishing an economic advantage in the early game.

Tuwei Live was once again filled with various 666s!

The two commentators had been building up to this since the beginning, saying that this jungler was slow at farming, and the opponent had seized this 5 to 8 second window to invade, establishing a matching economic advantage in the early game.

In contrast, the official commentators, the oB hadn't even realized this and only gave the shot when the two players encountered each other. The viewers had no idea why these two had encountered each other!