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DFM team, with the best score of only the top 16, won the favor of 21 sponsors during S11. And their "miraculous qualifying" also showed the world a brand new Japanese e-sports ecosystem.
text / Han Rongdi and Ake's
top laners are still one month away from being 26 years old, and ADC and support are the same age as 25 years old.
If calculated based on the average age of all participating teams in S11 this time, DFM (23.4 years old) is tied with PCE and 100T to become the second-ranked team in age. Even the two relatively young players will celebrate their birthdays in the group stage, and after that, their average age of 23.8 will be close to the No. 1 TL.
For some DFM players, this may be their last S match.
But it is such a team whose player ID may not be well-known to the public. In the finalist group extra game, facing the opponent who failed in the previous round of competition, the well-known LCS team Cloud 9, DFM held the "Double Dragon" with a stunning momentum, overturned the North American team with star players such as Perkz and Zven, and successfully determined the quota for the group stage.
In fact, this is the first time that DFM has entered the League of Legends Global Finals group stage, and it is also the best result of the S competition in LJL.
Only one game takes to create a miracle, and DFM has been walking the road to the group stage for six years.
1
From interest to career,
The unconventional DFM of Umesaki's army
5 years old, Umesaki fell in love with electronic games when he first came into contact. However, like most of his peers in Japan, he had to give up his hobbies in order to study. "CS Online" was popular all over the world when he was in college, and the concept of e-sports took shape in Umesaki's mind. However, after entering the workplace, he once again stayed away from the game world.
In 2012, the Japanese team participated in WCG. This greatly touched Umesaki, who had already operated the DetonatioN team, and "building a team to participate in the World Championship" became his wish, , but at that time, the operation of the team was still his part-time job.
In 2013, " League of Legends " came to a critical moment in the process of globalization. Although the DetonatioN team lost in WCG and Umezaki, who had experienced the world arena, was even more determined to his e-sports goal. In April of the same year, a new LOL team was formed, which is the prototype of the DFM team mentioned in the article.
The newly established team won a great victory and ranked among the top in the JCG League. Although it was at the bottom for a time, more and more people found Umezaki to learn about the e-sports industry from him. At the same time, the LJL League was officially established. In April 2014, Nobuyuki Umezaki officially quit his job, and DFM also took advantage of the situation to become the first full-time professional team in the LJL region.
Professional operation allowed DFM to win almost everything in the LJL League. Although it failed again in the IWIC wild card event, Yutapon, the then top laner and outstanding player, made audiences around the world begin to notice this newly established event in Japan.
The early DFM was indeed not smooth. They lost in IWIC when they won the league championship and missed all global events in League of Legends. They ranked first in the regular season but lost to their opponents in the finals and missed the World Championship again.
Interesting thing is that the Japanese e-sports circle is so small that the player who is very good at operating is the main ADC of the team today, and the opponent's top laner that DFM lost is the protagonist Evi who is now leading them to victory.
S7 came to China. The focus of the finalists that year was WE, C9, FNC, but it would not be the RPG of the LJL region. As a star top laner in the competition area, Evi decided to join the DFM team in the new season, and jungler Steal also joined the team with him.This jungler from South Korea no longer needs to occupy foreign players this year. Therefore, DFM has become the first team of three Korean players in S11 except LCK. What is exposed behind this is the hidden danger of the lack of professional e-sports population in this region.
Before this year, DFM's World Championship journey was repeated in "breakout, get out, continue to break out". Although the plot was repeated, the undercurrent also surged.
Time comes 2021. This team that has frequently failed in the world competition has become the most sponsored LOGOs on all participating teams. Among them, there are many Japanese airlines such as ANA ANA. and DFM's branch also includes popular projects such as "PUBG" and "VALORANT" as well as popular fighting e-sports projects in Japan. The story of joining the army in
DFM is very similar to many domestic teams. They got together in their early years with their love, and there was no support from large enterprises or capital behind them. Compared with the rapid development of domestic e-sports, Japanese e-sports seems to have become a "forgotten corner" in the public eye. In an interview in 2015, Nobuyuki Umezaki said that when negotiating many sponsorship cooperation, he still needs to popularize the basic situation of the other party in science teams and e-sports.
Curious question arises. In the past five or six years, what made this team stand out in business?
2
team uniforms with brand LOGO,
is a comprehensive innovation of Japanese e-sports
e-sports , strength speaks. In the past decade, the commercial development potential of an e-sports player has been directly linked to their performance in the field.
Because of this, most e-sports clubs adopt the traditional "Utah Jazz Mode" that relies on participating in the competition and players to get the ranking in the competition, thereby attracting sponsorship.
However, in this case, The DFM team, which has the best score in the top 16, has won the favor of 21 sponsors during the S11 period, covering 3C, fast sales, clothing, communications and even aviation and real estate. The number of is much higher than the 11 companies in S9 champion FPX and the 9 companies in S10 champion DK. is even higher than the LPL division (18 companies), which has been in the world's leading position in the field and shopping malls in recent years.
In fact, the rise of DFM in the commercial battlefield is not an isolated case. Behind it is the change in attitude of brand owners in the entire Japanese region towards the e-sports marketing market.
And the reason for this change comes from the changes in the Japanese e-sports market environment.
According to the "2020 Annual Esports Market Report" released by NewZoo, the compound annual growth rate of the Japanese e-sports market in 2020 reached 20.4%, and began to narrow the gap with other mature e-sports markets. According to data released by Japanese publisher KADOKAWA Game (the publisher of Famitsu) in February 2020, the number of in Japan's e-sports audience has reached 7.25 million in 2021, and in 2018 this number was only 3.826 million. KADOKAWA Game also predicts that nearly 10% of Japanese citizens will become e-sports audiences in 2025.
The development of the Japanese e-sports market in recent years is obvious to all, and support from the Japanese government level is also indispensable. The most important measure is the establishment of the Japanese e-sports alliance JESU.
018 is called the first year of Japanese e-sports. In February, Hideki Okamura, president of the CESA Digital Entertainment Association of Japan, announced that in order to help the Japanese e-sports market overcome management problems, it will merge the three major institutions of the Japanese e-sports association, the e-sports promotion organization and the Japanese e-sports Federation, and officially establish a new organization JESU Japan E-sports Alliance. The establishment of
JESU has solved some of the inherent problems of Japanese e-sports.
Since Japanese e-sports events are classified as commercial activities rather than sports events, their maximum prize is limited to RMB 6,600 and are distributed as prizes rather than prizes. This has also made it difficult for small and medium-sized third-party e-sports events to take shape in Japan.
After JESU was born, Japanese e-sports players were granted licenses to Japanese professional e-sports players, allowing them to participate in competitions that exceed those permitted by law. While ensuring the rights and interests of players, it also "releases" the local event organizers. Under such circumstances, more and more companies are beginning to invest in the Japanese e-sports market.
At the beginning of last year, Japan Telecom Telephone Co., Ltd. raised 300 million yen (about 15.6 million yuan) to build a 5G comprehensive e-sports hall NTTe in the Akihabara area of Tokyo. At the same time, Douyu Japanese live broadcast platform Mildom was launched, leading the Japanese live broadcast market in terms of user viewing time and activity. In March this year, Japanese game giant Sony personally took over and acquired the third-party e-sports event Evolution Championship Series (EVO) from Triple Perfect.
matches the overall environment optimization, which is a rising Japanese e-sports marketing market. Japanese brand owners have begun to participate in e-sports marketing in depth and are willing to provide the team with the best resources.
Take the DFM team that just made history as an example. EDION, a large home appliance store, set up a special area for DFM on the second floor of the core business district store in Akihabara area in Tokyo.
This area is separated from the other parts of the mall by a light box from the special decorative style, occupying one-third of the entire floor of the mall, and has areas such as team cultural promotional photos and videos, team uniforms and derivatives sales, LJL game video carousel, team cooperation models peripherals and e-sports chair sales, e-sports experience and other areas. In addition, they also sponsored the DFM team summer game documentary throughout the process - only Japanese celebrity game producers have enjoyed this treatment before. The commercial outbreak of the
DFM team this year is a portrayal of the growth of the entire Japanese e-sports market.
It can be seen that brand owners still retain the most tolerant mentality towards this team with a shallow accumulation. But in time, DFM still needs to prove itself on the field to consolidate the team's commercial value. It can be expected that brand owners will have higher expectations for the team's performance on the field - especially after they have made history this year.
can enter the S11 group stage as the first, and the DFM team has won a place on the field for itself. In the shopping mall, the achievements they have achieved have broken the iron law of e-sports. On the day of the promotion of , multiple DFM-related entries appeared on the Japanese online platform, which led to changes in the overall e-sports public opinion in Japan.
More importantly, DFM's "miracle qualifying" also shows the world a brand new Japanese e-sports ecosystem.
In previous stereotypes, Japanese e-sports seemed to be deeply bound to the labels of fighting events and unpopular niches. However, if you reveal the major teams in the LJL region, you will find a different world behind them. The V3 team that participated in S10 last year was a team formed by the well-known Japanese school Kobe University . There are many teams like the e-sports branch of the Fukuoka SoftBank Eagle Baseball Team in the LJL region, and behind the AXIZ team is AX, a subsidiary of Japan's first private TV station NTV.
Baseball strong teams, university campuses, TV stations... The capital behind the LJL competition area team has covered many aspects such as traditional sports, education, and entertainment. is nothing unexpected. DFM's qualifying will bring more attention to the LJL region. As the understanding deepens, the greater impact behind it is the global improvement of Japanese e-sports. At the same time, this also brings new stimulation to Japanese e-sports, boosts morale and increases the attractiveness of Japanese e-sports market.
Although DFM lost to T1 and EDG in the group stage, it may be difficult to make a greater breakthrough on S11 this time, but this team has completed the current mission of Japan's e-sports. And just as Umezaki Nobuyuki hoped when he decided to resign and focused on his e-sports career, DFM has rushed to the world and won a place in the history of Japanese e-sports.
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