A long time ago, ESPN though that esports were a joke, refusing to even air them. Now, ESPN has dedicated huge resources to being the name for esports, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were kind of right. Esports will never be like normal sports, and this is evidenced by the infamous troll Tyler1 racking up over 200k viewers for a tournament he created, the Tyler1 Champion Series Tournament.

Tyler1, for those unfamiliar with League of Legends, is as loved as he is hated. He popularized ‘running it down mid’ and made a name for himself by showing zero regard for Riot, League of Legends, or other players. Despite all of that, after getting banned from playing and streaming League of Legends – his accounts are now banned on sight by Riot – Tyler1 has achieved massive fame on Twitch beyond just League of Legends.

In keeping with his internet persona, Tyler1 has also created his own championship series. Though it had a reported prize pool of $10,000, the original website said that a generous gift of $4.20 would be given to the winners. It also featured ridiculous inserts of Tyler1 onto analysts desks and pictures of the teams while he interviewed them over chat programs.

The tournament was, for all purposes, a troll tournament. It was sponsored by Riot’s most infamous troll and shoutcast by him – in a sleeveless button-up with a tie – and the infamous Delta Fox, a team made of all-star streamers and playing under the name Stream Dream Team – made it all the way to the finals, where they lost by playing the way they always have, ridiculously and hilariously. In an after game interview, two of them weren’t even there to answer questions from Tyler1, and when imaqtpie returned to his computer, he came in by immediately mocking a team mate and saying, “Is this motherfucker talking shit?” which devolved into a sea of laughter and chaos.

What this shows though, to the tune of over 200k viewers, is that esports fans are fans of more than just teams and players. Esport fans connect with the game itself, and they connect with the legacies and entertainment that they, not some organization, determine. Following on the heels of Dota 2’s Midas Mode, non-sanctioned tournaments are proving that fans enjoy content about their favorite games, not necessarily professional content though, just entertaining content. There is undoubtedly a future for these bizarre, off-brand tournaments – the fans have proven that – but the future of how exactly they will operate is uncertain.

$10,000 might seem like a lot to the average person, but for the 16 teams invited, that amount of money isn’t likely much of an incentive, especially after splitting it. This is where the future of such tournaments gets a little less clear. For the fans, it’s a huge hit, and for the people involved, it looked like a lot of fun, but for the types of people that have just bought into the NA LCS for over $10 million, it’s unlikely they, or Riot, take any of this very seriously. Gamers definitely aren’t like normal sports fans, and that could be great for esports or very, very bad, especially when more people tuned in to watch a sleeveless streamer cast from his home than tuned in to watch a multi-million dollar production of national tournaments.