Hi Peter

Thanks for getting back to me regarding the issue you are experiencing with your weekly League of Legends Cups.

The League of Legends [UK] Facebook Group organised a successful 5v5 tournament in January. They asked members to sign up individually and the tournament admins would generate balanced teams with the members according to ranks.
https://www.facebook.com/events/399842386840152/

This weekend there will be a 5v5 tournament beginning hosted by the League of Legends [UK] Facebook Group which has 16 teams competing. I am on the admin team for this tournament and within 48 hours of the launch of the signup page we saw over 20 teams sign up.
https://www.facebook.com/events/782073318515218/

Both tournaments have all games streamed and casted by community members as well as one or two bigger names getting involved such as ESL Sona.

In the past there have also been other popular UK tournaments hosted by community groups.
GoSan's 5v5 Tournament: https://www.facebook.com/events/633566263401005/
Regular 1v1 and 2v2 tournaments hosted at London League - https://www.facebook.com/groups/LeagueOfLondon/
1v1, 2v2 and upcoming 5v5 tournaments being hosted by League of Legends UK - https://www.facebook.com/groups/LoLUK/
Anime League's 2v2 Invitational Tournament - https://www.facebook.com/events/234877686702748/

I have been involved with many online community tournaments and the success of each tournament has been determined by the popularity of the tournament organiser, good advertising and an organiser's good track record of well run tournaments.

For the ESL UK weekly Cups I believe they are experiencing the same problems as Gfinity's weekly tournaments. There are different factors to take into consideration with ESL UK's Cups:
- Tournament Title
Giving the tournament the title Gold and Platinum cup can lead to confusing on the tournament eligibility and imply that players must be one of the two ranks in order to compete. As far as I'm aware the eligibility of the tournament is Bronze-Platinum ranks.
- Tournament Frequency
Tournaments are hosted weekly and this may throw off people's interests. Frequent events should usually have a 'breather' period with a minimum gap of two weeks.
- Tournament Seeding
Is there any seeding applied in the weekly tournaments. Seeding should always be applied regardless of the number of entries or the type of game mode played. This will give fairer opportunities for low level teams to advance into later stages of the tournament. A team's seed can be calculated using the ranks of each individual player in the team roster.
- Tournament Duration
As far as I'm aware the weekly tournaments will only last for a single evening. Perhaps you can try and expand tournaments to last for two or more days/evenings? This will require a minimum entry number such as 8 teams, otherwise why not consider doing a Round Robin format for low numbers?
- Tournament Casting/Streaming
Providing there is not a clash with other ESL UK tournaments why not stream matches on the ESL UK Twitch channel? The matches could be a selection of matches from each round and then stream all matches in the Semi Finals and Finals. For casters there are many practicing casters in our communities who would be willing to get involved and offer their services. By doing so it would create more of a community atmosphere around the tournaments and would create good publicity the tournaments.
- Tournament Advertising
There has not been much advertisement of the weekly tournaments. The tournaments could be advertised through a variety of platforms, including the UK Subreddit, the main Subreddit and the UK Facebook Group Communities. The admins over at the League of Legends UK Facebook Group are more than happy to advertise the group and I'm sure admins of other community groups would be happy to do the same.

There's certainly more ideas to suggest for the weekly tournaments such as prizes, game modes, player stats and more. I would be happy to get involved and further discuss these ideas with you and your League of Legends admin team.

Regards,
Gary K