Also in esports a lot of the event hype feels manufactured and forced.
I do like watching esports though, I just think there's so much room for improvement in the whole way the thing is presented.
That isn't an e-sports specific phenomenon though. Maybe it's the case more with US sports teams, but in something like football/soccer you have teams like Manchester United that have a massive global brand that is attractive to people in multiple countries and may have zero connection to Manchester or England as a whole. People in other countries will choose a team at some point based on specific players they like, a certain style of play, or even who their friends/family are already rooting for. Formula 1 likewise is also just a pure battle of the brands. Pick a team, follow it closely, and cheer for them.
I don't understand traditional sports teams. They claim to represent a geographic region, yet the typical player on such teams have as much history or loyalty to that region as I do to Jupiter.
As far as rooting for teams within a region, it usually boils down to finding your favorite personalities like that other guy said. Most of them stream on twitch for hours every day.
Also, all of the local regular sports teams I grew up rooting for never win anything so having no ties and getting to be a bandwagon fan in eSports cathartic for me haha
Not uncommon at all in my country. In fact, most major clubs have teams in many different sports.
Remember that most teams are named after their sponsor. A sponsor is not related to any city/esport. It's just a sponsor.
It's a bit more complicated than that, actually. Most of the large esports organizations (examples: Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Fnatic, Team Liquid) have an identity that's separate from both their sponsors and their teams. Teams that represent a single sponsor are pretty rare -- I've seen a few, but they're not common.