Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and League of Legends is the biggest esport in the world. One has magic, deaths, towers, minions, monsters and more. The other has mortals dribbling a ball on a rectangular pitch. They might not have a lot of common on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find they share several things that are paramount to their success.

First and foremost, both games have extremely low barriers to entry. All you need to play soccer is a round object and one or two things you can pretend are goals. It’s that simple.

Likewise, League of Legends could essentially be played on a potato. It has close to the lowest technical requirements of any game out there and it’s free-to-play. At the same time, you could spend thousands of dollars on equipment for either game in an attempt to give yourself the best competitive edge. The important thing is, you don’t actually need to if you can’t or simply don’t want to.

Both games are also simple to play and watch, but incredibly difficult to master.

All you have to do to win a soccer match is dribble down the pitch and get the ball past a keeper. All you have to do to win a League game is march down across the Rift and capture the Nexus. Neither is as simple as it sounds, but they’re straightforward nonetheless.

Of course, simple and straightforward are relative terms. Soccer is relatively simple compared to some other sports and League is relatively simple compared to some other esports. The gaps aren’t always huge, but when you’re looking for mass adoption, every little bit matters.

For example, basketball has a slightly higher barrier to entry and is only slightly more complicated to watch due to the fast pace and constant scoring. CS:GO is slightly more complex thanks to the scoring and the more frequently changing camera angles, and it has a definitively higher barrier to entry. Neither is astronomically more complex, but there’s enough there to make a difference.

Along the same lines, both soccer and League can be enjoyed by virtually all skill levels. A bronze player can have just as much fun playing League as someone in plat. Someone playing soccer at their local park can have just as much fun as someone playing in a semi-pro league. That’s because there’s little technical difference between the elite/pro level and the casual/amateur level for either League or soccer; unlike a sport like football where there’s a huge discrepancy between what you might play with friends at the park versus what they play in stadiums on Sunday.

This translates to League and soccer as spectator sports as well. For football fans, watching amateur football is generally considered boring (college football isn’t amateur, it’s more of just a different league). Yet, people around the world gather to watch all levels of soccer, even if it’s just some casuals playing at their park every Saturday.

Video games in general do a pretty good job at this, as evidenced by the existence of Twitch, but League does it especially well. There’s a reason League has never faltered as one of the most popular games to stream. It’s fun to watch just about anyone play.

Beyond watching amateurs play, both soccer and League are extremely easy to watch on a professional level as well. Soccer has almost no breaks, except at the half, and League has essentially no breaks except between games.

Soccer is also pretty straightforward as far as what’s happening on the pitch is concerned. There’s various camera angles, but almost all of the important action is being shown from a wide angle at all times.

League does this very well too. They focus on the most pertinent action, but in a way that captures a maximum amount of rift space, rather than focusing on a single champ.

Overwatch on the other hand, is much more difficult to watch and follow. If you’re very familiar with the game, it’s somewhat easier to keep up, but even for those who watch/play regularly, it can be difficult to follow along thanks to the constantly changing camera angles and the narrow field of vision.

On a final note, League of Legends and soccer are both incredibly difficult to master. On the professional level, each game takes immense amounts of skill and teamwork to win. While this is true for most sports, it isn’t necessarily true for all esports.

A game like Rocket League is a fantastically fun, but there’s a definite soft ceiling in regards to skill. There simply aren’t enough variables at play to make the best pro players significantly better than the amateurs. The underlying complexity of soccer and League are what make it so that even the best players are constantly rewarded for making themselves better. Rocket League doesn’t have that to the same degree and therefore can become stale and even frustrating when you’re at or near the perceived top.

All that being said, there is one other potential esport that shares a lot of these successful traits, Fortnite. While the game has a slightly higher barrier to entry than League, it still has a lot going for it. It’s free-to-play, is fun at most all levels and is simple to watch and straightforward to play. With all those boxes ticked, it’s safe to say that Fortnite has immense potential as the esport of the future.

What other attributes do you think have allowed soccer and League of Legends to stay at the global top for so long? Let us know in the comments!