What happens when you're too old to play League of Legends professionally?

Riot Games is taking measures to ensure professional League of Legends players can continue to have a career once they "age out" of eSports, head of EU eSports Jason Yeh tells Polygon.

Since 2011, the company has supported a user base of relatively young professional gamers — according to the Riot's fine print, you can start playing professionally in League of Legends tournaments at the tender age of 17, while on average a professional League gamer will retire by their mid-20s.

Age is of particular importance in eSports, as youth dictates two necessary factors in being a skilful player: fine motor skills and reaction time, both of which begin to decline with age.

"The career life cycle depends on the player," says Yeh. According to Yeh, a number of eSports professionals from the early years of League of Legends have since gone on to have careers as live designers for the game they once played professionally; however, Riot is now also working proactively to ensure professional gamers can have career longevity by creating regular summits that aim to teach pro gamers how to maintain their personal brand.

"We're influenced a lot by real world sports here," says Yeh. "The NFL has a 'Rookie Symposium,' for example. It's basically an orientation program which is similar to what we're doing."

The Symposium, which was created in 1997 to help these NFL newcomers, was designed to detail what young football players can expect in their first year in the NFL. The event features motivational seminars, boot camps and cautionary tales where new draftees get a crash course on the do's and don'ts of transitioning into professional play.

Riot Games' own pro player summit deals with not only the do's and don'ts of being in the public eye, but also interviewing techniques, brand building and general media training. Those are skills that, according to Yeh, can be used both in and outside of professional gaming after their immediate careers come to a close.

"While it's still pretty early days in eSports, the best thing we can do for these teams is increase their viewership and exposure and amplify that exposure," says Yeh.