Interview with Caedrel on his return to Excel Esports as a content creator: ‘I think this is the season Excel make playoffs, but if they do lose, I promise it’s not my fault this time!’

Image source: Michal Konkol/Riot Games

Popular British League of Legends streamer and LEC caster, Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont, has today returned to Excel Esports as a content creator, a role he’ll be balancing with his LEC casting. So, how will he work with his former organisation, where he played for two years, and what are his views on the new Excel of 2022? Dom Sacco catches up with Caedrel on all this and more.

What Excel said on re-signing Caedrel as a content creator on a one-year deal

Before we jump into the interview, Excel said that signing Caedrel again ‘marks a welcome return as he will look to bolster the brand’s content output and engagement’. 

“As an official Excel content creator, Caedrel will stream, create YouTube content and have a presence across Excel social channels alongside its four rosters of players,” Excel added.

Wouter Sleijffers, CEO of Excel Esports, commented: “Caedrel has been an integral part of the Excel brand and when we parted ways over a year ago we promised to stay in touch. Caedrel is a multi-talent and one of Britain’s biggest esports personalities and it’s been amazing to see his transformation and growth. We couldn’t be more excited that we are reuniting again and I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together.”

Esports News UK: Caedrel, congrats on re-joining Excel. What’s it like being a part of them again?

Caedrel: It’s kind of weird, cos I don’t have to play. And every single time I think of Excel I think of playing, so it’s definitely different but it’s pretty cool. I think a lot of people still there I knew from before, so I get along well with them.

Excel is where I started my professional career and I feel like my time there will always resonate with the community, so I am really excited to be returning. I will still be continuing my LEC casting duties with my role at Excel being a separate endeavour where I can explore my passion for streaming and content creation.

What are your thoughts on the new Excel without Kieran or Joel there, but with Tim Reichert making some changes and bringing Mikyx in etc? 

I worked with Tim Reichert before – one of my first teams was Schalke in 2017 and he was the head of it, so I worked with him before and another familiar face is good.

The team is a lot different now, I think Excel went through a lot of brand changes while I was there, it was trying to find its identity and what it wanted to push as a brand. Obviously it was kind of fresh to the LEC so there were a lot of ideas floating around in terms of what it looks like from being a player.

But now I think they’ve settled on a brand that works for them really well. They’ve made some big moves – the Mikyx one is pretty huge. And you can see by their performance in the league, they’re having a lot of success which is great to see. I don’t follow many of the other games [Excel are in] as I’m such a League-focused person.

Is this the season that Excel make playoffs?

Yeah, I think so. From speaking to players it looks like it is, but maybe me coming back is going to break them and make them go 0-6 now.

This will not change my duties on the LEC or any of my stream content

I will always compliment good league of legends and criticise bad league of legends, regardless of who is playing

Excited to deny them playoffs from the sidelines 🤠 https://t.co/vGlLvolGwp

— Caedrel (@Caedrel) February 28, 2022

(Question asked ahead of Excel’s match versus Mad on February 25th) For me, I feel like there may be five teams finishing above Excel, but Vitality and Mad Lions haven’t been playing as well as they may be expected to. So if Excel does make the playoffs, which big team do you think will finish outside of the top six?

Mad will probably not make it, I think. They’re looking really shaky. The off-season I think was pretty good by them, there were some question marks around the AD Carry but I think this team doesn’t really have a clear identity in terms of who’s carrying the games. A lot of pro players have spoken the same kind of thoughts on this team.

Maybe they can turn it around, I mean they have the coaching staff to do it, but I think it’s too late right now. They have to win this weekend, if they win this weekend they have a chance. Excel vs Mad this weekend will determine who goes to playoffs, I think.

When this announcement comes out, do you think you’ll get a lot of memes on socials saying Caedrel has rejoined Excel, now they’re doomed?

Yeah I’m gonna throw out my own as well! So I’ll go into the joke of course. It’s kind of funny – obviously I have nothing to do with the League side of Excel – it has no impact from me whatsoever. So if they do lose, I promise it’s not my fault this time! 

But yeah, I hope they do make it, because that would be exciting to see.

I last officially interviewed you, Caedrel, back in 2017 when you were playing with Schalke, and obviously your life has changed a lot since then. What would the Caedrel back then ask the Caedrel of today in this interview?

That’s a good question. That interview was over four, almost five, years ago and I was a very different person back then. I was just coming into my first LEC split and I was pretty cocky and confident.

What would I ask myself now? Maybe I would teach myself how to cook so I wouldn’t have had to order every day when I was a pro! That would’ve been lovely. But jokes aside, I’d ask myself ‘how’s it going?’ and I’d answer: “It’s going really good, just keep doing with you’re doing, try as hard as you can at being a pro, try to make every moment worth it…”

But there’s always options in life. I think back then I was very worried that if I’m not a pro, then what am I gonna do? There was that pressure I had on my shoulders a lot of the time, where it’s like, if I’m not performing, what am I doing? What if I’m kicked and in a different team or League doesn’t work out? But now, the growth has been crazy with streaming and casting, and now I feel like I don’t have that pressure to perform anymore. I feel more like more of a human being, rather than someone who just wakes up and plays League all day.

“I was really close to joining Vitality, but leaving casting for coaching after one year would’ve been silly. I kind of want to leave casting on a level head, and be like, ‘yep, casting was fun, I really enjoyed my multiple years casting, however long it’ll be, now it’s time for a new chapter in coaching’, rather than just bouncing between the two and sitting in limbo. So when I’m done with casting I’ll be probably done, fully.”

When did you realise that streaming and casting were viable alternative for you that you could pursue, outside of playing? You made a guest appearance on the LEC to start, from what I recall.

Yeah I did one guest cast for 10 minutes with two other casters for fun. I don’t know if Riot intended me to do this in the first place because other people had already done it as well. It was a new thing, I believe. Then after that, I got so much feedback from the community saying how great it was, and I was overwhelmed by it.

I realised how fun casting was, and I reached out to [UK caster] Excoundrel and said: “Hey man, when I finish my LEC weekend on Saturdays, do you want to sit down on Sunday and just do two games of casting together, so I can practice? Like, ‘I can’t give you anything but I’d really appreciate it’.”

And he was kind enough to say: “Yeah 100%, I’ll help you as much as you want.”

And then that’s how the cycle began, with Quickshot pushing me and Excoundrel helping me.

Then I did my Worlds debut in 2020, that was unreal. The community was kind of lacking a pro player voice in the casting scene, after Deficio left, where I can say what’s happening on the map in a more complicated way. And that was a tough learn, because you had to figure out how to say it in a digestible language where people could actually follow along. But I think I found the middleground, which was good.

What’s it like having gone from a smaller player at the start of your career to a huge well known streamer and LEC talent? It’s been quite a wild ride for you! 

I started streaming in Worlds 2020, when I was casting a bit. I had like 50 to 100 viewers playing Dead By Daylight or Until Dawn, and other random games. I didn’t really think much of streaming. 

I guess people enjoyed the stream because I was a personality face on the LEC, also playing in really high elo with all the pros, but not being a pro player so I could spend time with fans a lot.

A lot of people ask me why or how I succeeded, and I don’t know. I have a very bad mindset, where if I’m not doing anything, then I must be doing something. So this was quite an unhealthy thing I noticed at the end of the year, where I streamed 2,200 hours last year which was about five hours a day on average. So I realised I was streaming a lot. If I’m sitting at home or I’m away from the LEC or not doing anything, then I just stream. 

When I stopped being a pro, the first thing I thought was ‘wow, I’ll have more free time’, but now I don’t. Every time I have free time, I want to do something, so I just stream and it just stuck.

You strike me as very genuine and down to earth, whereas some streamers can be seen as a little over the top or having an on-stream persona. Do you think that plays a part in your success?

I’m very open and honest about everything, no matter what it is. I don’t really hide behind PR statements, or if anything goes wrong somewhere, or people want a direct answer on it, I’ll always give it. Maybe if it comes from being a pro, if something was wrong in a game or a scrim, I won’t say ‘well I think you did fine and need to work on this a bit’, I’ll just say ‘no, you’re fucking inting and need to make sure we get this together now’. 

So I don’t beat around the bush too much. But that can be a bad thing sometimes, because then you get a slap on the wrist, which I have had a few times, but we won’t get into that. So I guess it’s just that.

Caedrel you were linked with a coaching role at Team Vitality, which you ultimately turned down. But is coaching something you could see yourself doing in the future?

Yeah. I do have a really big competitive itch still. I look at teams, I watch a lot of LEC, LCK and LPL all the time, and I always think to myself: “I could help these teams so much.”

I just want to implement so many ideas I have that I can’t really share with anyone. I could have strong views upon the game, but me saying it doesn’t do anything, but showing it does. As much as I can talk the talk, I want to prove I can walk the walk.

I was really close to joining Vitality, but leaving casting after one year would’ve been silly, as much as I can maybe come back. I kind of want to leave on a level head, and be like, ‘yep, casting was fun, I really enjoyed my multiple years casting, however long it’ll be, now it’s time for a new chapter in coaching’, rather than just bouncing between the two and sitting in limbo for a year, casting or coaching, or spending two years in coaching then going back to casting.

So when I’m done with casting I’ll be probably done, fully. I don’t know if I’ll stop this year, because I’m really enjoying it and the streaming is going really well, and I think I have a really good schedule compared to last year now. So maybe this year or the year after, I’m not too sure yet. If an opportunity arises, if a team has some incredible players that I respect a lot, and I believe they have a chance of winning Worlds, I’ll just take it for sure, yeah, because I think you can’t just leave those kinds of opportunities waiting. 

Excel is all about ‘the power of better’, the ethos of improvement, these days. Your streams are super popular but are there any things you want to change with them or tweak/adapt in the future, or is it a case of ‘it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’?

Yeah probably [the latter], I just want to keep up with what I’m doing. I think what I’m doing is working really well, I have this set schedule of co-streaming a lot of regions I like to watch.

I study League a lot and I think a lot of my viewers like to watch this and study with me, so a lot of my streams are just: wake up, watch the Korean league or Chinese league all day until around 3pm or 4pm, and then maybe play a game or two. That’s basically all my streams.

Or, it’s turning on a stream and reviewing some of the games from the LEC or the LCS and talking through things, and everything League-related, basically. 

“I’m very open and honest about everything, no matter what it is. I don’t really hide behind PR statements. If anything goes wrong, or people want a direct answer on it, I’ll always give it. Maybe if it comes from being a pro, if something was wrong in a game or a scrim, I won’t say, ‘well I think you did fine and need to work on this a bit’, I’ll just say, ‘no, you’re fucking inting and need to make sure we get this together now’. 

There were multiple YouTube channels taking clips from your streams. I know Asmongold teamed up with one of the channels that took his clips, did you do the same?

Yeah, that’s what I did. I reached out to one of the clip channels and said: “If I give you exclusive rights, will you do it for me under the Caedrel brand and I’ll just copyright anyone else who does it.”

Because there were like ten different clip channels! And they had clips with 100,000 or 200,000 views of me saying random stuff, and I was like, hang on, this is my content – I guess maybe I should have someone do it. I’ll be honest, I don’t get paid for all of the clips at all, and the clip channel is doing really well, so I kind of reached out to a place called LoL Drama, who were doing a lot of the League clips.

So I said: “Hey, you can have the YouTube channel and have everything, I just want to have it all in one place under CaedrelClips, would you be down to do it?”

And they said ‘yeah’. So they’re doing that for me, which is awesome, and the trade-off is they do all the Caedrel clips and put them on TikTok as well, so it benefits me, in terms of exposure, and it works for them which is cool.

I really like this Caedrelverse thing you did with the LEC recently. Will we see more Caedrelverse in the future? Tell us about another part of the Caedrelverse that could have happened had your career gone in another direction. 

(Chuckles) I guess there’s a lot of different Caedrelverses. Maybe one would be that I’d be with Vitality right now, or one where I never role-swapped from the mid-lane to jungle, I always wonder what that world would look like sometimes, or one where I never went pro in the first place. 

What I wanted to join when I was a kid was join the RAF and be a pilot. I got accepted into basic training but I never turned up, because if you want the truth – I have a very big fear of injections and they had to do blood tests, so I never turned up. That’s a secret little bit of lore if you want it! I was 16 or 17 and immature. So the reason I didn’t do that was because of this. And that’s what made me go pro.

So my fear of needles made me become a content creator, I guess. 

You joined DRX as a streamer last year. How long was that for and have you represented other orgs in your streaming career I may have missed, before joining Excel?

This DRX thing was poorly worded by them. How the LCK works is, to co-stream the LCK, you need to be part of a team in the LCK. So the LCK teams get given licenses to give to their streamers to watch the LCK.

I never joined them under an official contract to stream or produce content for them, they just gave me their license and I would watch their games, that was the trade-off. I never really put energy into changing the narrative around it, but I never really was a content creator for DRX. I was just simply having their license and they gave me permission to watch their games, and in turn, I was working with DRX for the Western audience. 

What will the deal with Excel involve, will they get a logo on your stream? I’d love to know how you’ll be working with them and promoting them. 

There are a few ideas in the pipes. I’ll be part of Excel, part of the Excel brand, back to what it was two years ago basically. 

There are a lot of casters out there, especially in the Valorant scene, who, when I first noticed were content creators or influencers or streamers for organisations they were also casting over, and my first instinct was: Well, isn’t public perception going to think there’s some kind of natural bias going on?

I can’t speak on their behalf, but I think the industry and the personalities are professional enough to give non-biased opinions. For me, I just love League of Legends, and I call out bad League of Legends, even if it’s my best friend playing, or my brother, or in this case Excel, I’m always going to be very level-headed when it comes to these things.

I’ll be part of Excel, you’ll see a lot of me to do with Excel and hopefully we can bounce off one another to grow each other’s brands.

I know some other casters work with orgs on the side, for example Troubleinc and the work she does with SK Gaming. Some people have called into question the objectivity of casters that also create content for orgs, have you been mindful of that? 

I think maybe people on the surface will always say that if I’m casting an Excel game and Excel make a good play, and I celebrate it, they will say Caedrel has an Excel bias. But I will celebrate good plays. And if Excel make a bad play, I’ll say it’s a bad play, of course it’s not going to change the way I speak or act about certain teams playing, just because it’s Excel playing. 

I think there’s a divide, and when I’m on the LEC the divide comes in, and when I’m not on the LEC the divide is removed.

Hopefully people don’t jump to the ship of: “Oh my God, Caedrel is so biased!”

I hope not, I don’t expect them to, but I’ll be very aware of this.

“When I first started casting, I realised how fun it was. I reached out to [UK caster] Excoundrel and asked if he would do some games of casting together, so I could practice. He was kind enough to say, ‘yeah 100%, I’ll help you as much as you want’. And then that’s how the cycle began, with Quickshot pushing me and Excoundrel helping me.”

What are your general views on the state of the game right now, and how you feel League of Legends may evolve in 2022 and 2023?

I think the game is a bit stale right now, in terms of drafts and picks. But I think that’s every year. If you look back to last year, we had the Hecarim meta for five to six weeks. I think spring split as a whole tends to be a lot more stale, because what happens is Riot puts out a very big patch at the end of the summer split, before Worlds. And that’s when things start to get very interesting. Then you go back to a stale spring split. So things are relative, and I think by the end of the split into summer it’ll be a lot more fun and dynamic to watch.

Also, teams are brand new in the start of spring, so no one knows what the hell they’re playing with and are trying to figure out how to play. 

What are your views on the UK/Ireland/Nordics European Regional League, the NLC? I guess you don’t have much time to watch the ERLs on top of everything else? We have Alphari and xMatty as two British players in the LEC, so what are your views on UK League these days?

It’s a very long discussion, because you can’t really relate it to performance issues as the NLC was in both EU Masters finals last year, with Fnatic and Excel. I guess the fanbases are either not there or just untapped. 

I think the biggest reason the LFL and LVP are shining is because they have huge content creators or brands behind one team that are backing that one team, like KCorp and Koi. But even if you take those out of the equation, the LFL will still hit like 100k to 200k viewers. 

I think French and Spanish fans are so passionate. For the fans in the Nordics/UK leagues, my first thought is that a lot of English fans or gamers are console gamers, so there isn’t as much of a computer League of Legends audience, but it could be wrong. It’s a long discussion covering many different things.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I’m just gonna keep doing what I do, and see how me and Excel do for the rest of the year.

You can follow Caedrel on Twitter and Caedrel on Twitch here, and follow Excel Esports on Twitter here