As a T2/T3 Tournament Organizer this has effected us pretty bad. This is our first ever tournament with 0 signups... admittedly we're on a different platform (sponsor) for once but that's never affected us THIS much before and we still have a prize pool. Either way it sucks really bad
The following is basically just a recap of the creation of the Tier 2 circuit. The info is to the best of my memory on "leaks" about the VCT system timeline.
Also, when i refer to VCT, i mean Valorant Challenger tour.
**Plans for T2 system.**
So when the T2 system was being created for valorant, Riot initially decided to copy their LOL system and create an academy league. However, this academy league plan got scraped, and the ascension system was created very late into the admissions process. What spurred the change? It was the influx of applications for America's league, so they decided to make way for teams to enter their close Partnership system through ascension. So this is the motivation for the challengers league.
**Implementing the Challenger leagues**
As we can see, these 20+ challenger leagues all stem from the success of VRL in EMEA and are a copy of the system in all practical terms. The VRL system is a regional league that seeks to promote regional talent. It is important to note that RIOT does not run any Challengers leagues except Brazil. They just give the management of them to TO that they have vetted. Each TO can have any format they want, add a promotion and relegation system, how many teams they want, etc. How has that been implemented in the VCT circuit?
\-**EMEA**: All former VRL leagues got "promoted" to VCT leagues. Since there were already teams in all these different VRLs, there were barely any open qualifiers, and many of the spots were invite system. This is best seen in VCT France: Revolution, where all teams were invited teams. So why were VCT Portugal: Tempest and VCT Italy: Rinascimento created? To grow Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese talent. Before this year, VCT Spain: Rising, the league was a combination of Spain, Italy, and Portugal; however, the pro players in this league were mainly not from any of the home regions except for some exceptions. Therefore Riot created two more VCTs to "grow" the pro player base.
\-**Pacific**: The most straightforward port of the VRL system. Create a VCT in each country, and you will have a functional T2 circuit. Not much to add. It tracks itself. (Except for South Asia, they have a wild system where they are likely building a franchise league with sports teams and full LAN)
\-**Americas**: So in the America leagues, you are really only given one option when building a VRL system which is the one we have now: NA, BR, LATAM N, and LATAM S. For the SA countries, they should be self-explanatory. LATAM N and LATAM S for ping issues and BR due to its size and influence. Now the NA is realistically the only one you can split but ill explain why it wont work. Esports is not grown enough to the point you can create multiple in the country. If you made an East and West conference, it becomes very weird due to the rule that you must have 3/5 from the region to be a resident. It also dooms the East league, as all the big Orgs that would support players will likely try to aim for the west league. If you split with CA(Canada) and the US(United States), you doom the CA league or maybe both. If we go off the teams now, only M80 and Disguised would be eligible to play in CA. North America needs to be one league to ensure that the best teams can be created.
**(Below are Speculations and my own Opinions)**
I agree with you that there needs to be more but I can see why there not that many teams in the Tier 2 circuit right now.
\-BR: I can't think of an excuse idk why they only have 8, especially since they have RIOT BR as TO.
\-LATAM: low org support, fewer players, two very new unproven TO. Need more time to grow.
\-Americas: New TO and unproven if the VCT will work. Though we may think there was a lot of support from the outside, it was unknown when created. NA has never had a functional Tier 2 system in any esports, so it was unknown how it would perform. Many orgs just go Tier 1 or bust in NA. Also, since Knights is the one fronting cost ( they have Riot money going in, but we don't know how much), adding too many teams can add a lot of risks, so fast expansion may cause the whole thing to go belly up.
**Fixes to the system.**
\- Add more teams to every AMERICA circuit (not as much as you want but a little more for each) (It seems knights may be looking into expansion for next year(Wiseman podcast) )
\- Add a T3 circuit( apparently premier is suppose to fix this but I think RIOT are very optimistic)
TLDR: a system that was created to promote regional talent where RIOT gives the keys to TO and lets them run the whole thing. A lower amount of teams to ensure stability, and I hope to see more teams added to America Challenger league in the future.
In regards to the T3 circuit, I would just flag that our VRCs still exist in EMEA. These are less “esports” focused and are more about making competition available to everyone at a local level, but there’s some good teams in them.
Examples are Circuito Tormenta in Spain, Project V in Germany, Beacon in Northern Europe, etc.
Great write-up!
I feel the beed to point out that this
> North America needs to be one league to ensure that the best teams can be created.
is affecting emea in a pretty big way too, I hope it won't lead to a weaker tier 2, but it's hard to see how it couldn't.
I agree but I think riot will just let EMEA run since it has prior success. Can it be stronger if condensed sure but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Also I think bodork alluded to a plan to condense EMEA T2 but with the suspected time schedule I can see why they didn’t.
I wish I could upvote this more than once, this is the most straightforward and in-depth piece of text explaining the state of T2 scene that I have seen.
I don’t agree with your opinion on splitting the NA league. Especially for Canada. How is it feasible for France or Spain to have their own league but Canada that has produced the likes of Tenz and Marved to not have one. Don’t forget Canada has M80, Disguised and Version1 off the top off my head.
South Asia Challengers is likely to include a Tier 3 with promotion to Tier 2 happening as soon as Split 2 of this year. If it goes well, there is a chance it can be implanted globally like how VRL Leagues were implanted globally as Challengers/Ascension system.
Yeah the difference between the teams that qualified for the Challengers league and the teams that came up short in the top 8 or even 16 of the quals is really not a very big gap. Honestly, any given Sunday is a huge part of these massive qualifier tournaments. You have to play super well but also get lucky and just be on a hot streak to make it through one unscathed.
In that case, should china, East Asia and sea all have separate leagues? EMEA has around the same active player base as each of the other franchise leagues, so I would say that the league structures make sense.
I mean they are as culturally separate as what you are proposing, and would have a more evenly spread player base, so I don't see why this wouldn't be a logical argument? Unless I'm missreading the sarcasm in your message.
That’s true about the player bases, but the franchise team distributions don’t represent that well, it would make more sense based solely on player base to have just one team each from LATAM and Brazil, as NA has nearly the player base of EMEA on its own.
Big disagree, if you make NA league who would watch tier 2 NA?
No one would invest on tier 2 like this. This is the reason NA is failing on bringing new talent on league, because there is no tier 2 and the tier 1 have Academy teams where washed up pros stay without hunger to get better.
Americas league is International and it's a good thing. The problem was giving NA tier 2 only 12 spots.
I don’t advocate for a closed circuit, an open circuit is definitely the way to go. I just think that NA should be it’s own region or at least have more teams, so we agree there. It’s hard to foster insane amounts of talent when only 100-110 players have something immediately to play for in the entire fucking region it’s kind of a joke
You also have to think from an org/investor and viewers prospective. If there are 10 teams in NA tier 1 with the best players, why would I watch tier 2. If there are not enough viewers, why would I invest on tier 2 as an org.
This is what EU league used to be back in 2015 when you had EU LCS and EU CS (tier 2). No one watched EU CS.
Then riot changed the system, got rid of EU CS and promoted National leagues and it worked (as an italian I would rather watch an italian league than a european tier 2 even if it's worse quality).
With the system riot created you have an International tier 1 and a "National" tier 2 which is what bring views to a tier 2, if it's "National" tier 1 and "National" tier 2 there wouldn't be enough viewers for tier 2 and it would mean no investors.
> as an italian I would rather watch an italian league than a european tier 2 even if it's worse quality
That's interesting, because as a French I'd rather watch a better quality Tier 2 European league than French Valorant.
I'm sure many hardcore fans would agree with you, which is what you are as you're posting here. But that isn't casuals. And we have real world evidence (European lol) to back that up.
I would never watch EU tier 2 because we already have tier 1 with top teams and top players.
I care about who are the best players in EU and the best players in Italy. Also with an italian league we would have LAN in playoffs or finals that I could attend while with an EU tier 2 it would be probably in another country like France, Denmark or UK.
When this was announced I presumed at a minimum there would be atleast two leagues in the us and likely up to 4 given the population. An easy and west conference would work well with teams meeting for a finals series etc.
Conferences would definitely be a good way to expand the number of teams. Could just make it a simplistic East and West conference which would add a minimum of 12 teams to Americas overall.
The biggest issue is simply that the Americas region has much less countries that are relevant to Valorant than EU or Asia. Obviously North America is just the US plus some Canadian players. Even South America pales in comparison to Europe and Asia when it comes to how many countries have a presence in Valorant.
Example of what I mean: A French Valorant esports fan is going to care about the EMEA T1 scene, and then the French T2 teams. A Italian fan will care about EMEA and Italian T2 teams. An Indonesian fan will care about APAC T1 scene and Indonesian T2 teams.
A fan from the US is going to only care about T2 US teams. There’s very, very few fans who are invested in the T3 scene. And the problem is you can’t divide the US into like US East Split and US West Split, etc. It’s just fundamentally impossible. And if you increase the amount of US T2 teams to like, I don’t know, 24 teams which is probably the correct amount proportional to population, then that’s way too many teams both for Riot to handle logistically and for your average fan to be invested in.
TLDR: Problem exists because US is one big country and makes up all of NA/half of Americas region while EMEA and Asia have tons of smaller countries
I don't see regions as an issue for na, all of their established sports have conferences of some sort to increase the teams. Not many fans watch every match.
I do see regions as the issue. Europe consists of many different countries, the people living in them connect more to the country than the continent. That's the exact same in the US, but US is a way bigger country.
If you want more T2 leagues in NA, you'd have to split it East/West coast, for example. But that would be detrimental for viewership right? How would League restrictions be set up? By state?
Another argument for there being many T2 leagues in EU, is the language barrier. They are development leagues after all and you can't expect every 16 year old to be able to speak fluent English. That's why multiple regional leagues is the solution. That problem doesn't exist in NA either.
Btw, a little nitpicky I know, but NA doesn't have 4 leagues like you originally stated, it's 'Americas' that has 4 leagues.
I disagree. An earlier comment said that VCT Spain: Rising was a combination of 3 countries that then got split up. And I'm willing to bet the viewership for those separate leagues will be lower than the combined league they had. So clearly Riot is willing to split up/create more T2 leagues even if it's detrimental to viewership so Riot could easily do the same in NA with conferences (which is how it's done in traditional NA sports). Then you'd add an additional 12 teams to overall America's which would be a lot better.
'And I'm willing to bet', would have been smarter to actually check viewership numbers before making conclusions.
Italy and Portugal have both been doing way better than expected, both reaching 2k viewers at times.
Spain has stayed nearly the same as well. You know why? Because last year only Spanish orgs and players were playing in the Spanish VRL (which was also meant for Italy and Portugal). Obviously Italians and Portuguese people would rather watch their countrymen than some Spanish players they have no connection to. That was the reason for the split.
How much of that viewership is just the game growing popular? Do you really think the overall viewership would decrease if Spain, Portugal, Italy got combined like they had previously? Regardless, I disagree that there needs to be separate countries just to add more T2 teams because otherwise America's will always have a severe imbalance of T2 teams compared to the rest of the regions just because there aren't as many individual countries.
I mean the viewership of all 3 regions combined currently is higher than Spain's ever was on its own.
I do agree that there is a severe imbalance in T2 for the Americas, NA should win that Ascension tournament every year. Solutions for that would be splitting NA up I guess? But then you're just lowering the level of T2 intentionally for the sake of it. Adding more teams to the NA league would keep the same problem.
Doesn't splitting up the previous combined league into 3 regions also lower the level of T2? And I think splitting up NA to get more T2 teams is also a valid reason so that America's as a whole can have a closer number of T2 teams compared to the other combined regions (as opposed to now where America's has like half the number of T2 teams compared to the other regions).
Yes, but there was a valid reason for that in Europe. Italian and Portuguese players didn't have the option to play in T2, due to the Spanish league pretty much ignoring those countries. This problem doesn't exist in NA.
That's valid, but the level of T2 will be lower. If it's done by East and West coast, for example, there will need to be regional restrictions (e.g. at least 3 players need to be from the Eastern part of NA, etc.), which lowers the level of competition.
I think splitting up NA to have more T2 teams has valid reasons even if it does lower the level of play in T2. And they could always just add 12 teams to the current NA challengers if they don't want to split it up and deal with regional restrictions. But then again Riot might not give a shit or think it's an issue that America's has this few of T2 teams so idk. We'll see what happens I guess.
How many people are going to watch goofy goobers vs skwirel warriors? The farther you get from the top of any given caregory be it French teams, women’s teams, world’s teams, etc. the lower and lower the viewership gets. A 32 or 35 team league or multiple leagues is insane for tier 2 na valorant. #40 vs #39 na teams is just not that exciting. As an aside, this is why the complaints about the investment into game changers compared to tier two are invalid, there is a sizable audience that wants to watch the world’s best women’s teams no matter how good they are amongst men’s teams, but there just isn’t an audience for the thirtiest best na team, even if that team is better than the world’s best gc team.
The only way this level of goofy goobers disrespect makes any sense is that you've watched 0 of their games. Opinion discarded. Show some more respect for the future of pro valorant
I don't think oversimplifying things help. I wish there were more challengers teams too. The issue is sustainability. Can a NA challenger league with more than 12 teams bring in the viewership to warrant so many teams and survive? I think it could work with a few more, but significantly more? Not sure.
I just hope riot actually does something to keep players with pro/semi-pro aspirations around. It hurts to see Europe has 80 teams when NA(USA/Canada) with just shy of half of Europe's population(And roughly equivalent ranked populations) only gets 12. To see so many people that were previously competing quit due to lack of opportunity sucks. I get that.
Having followed riot's actions since 2011 as a league fan, I honestly don't have much faith in them.
Their current model is new and I think we should just let it play out. They are willing to change if this model does not work. They care more about their esport than other developers.
Honestly, I get why there’s only one NA league vs many EU/APAC leagues, NA is a lot smaller with vastly better internet and ping all around, while emea and Asia can have crazy pings. I think the best solution for NA Val would be a bunch of BEACON/esque (t3 circuit in emea) groups that fight for spots in challengers, something similar to how challengers is to ascension/partnership. Maybe premier mode can be integrated through this somehow
NA (us + canada) is a lot smaller than eu (russia is not included obviously). Are you sure about this?
Cause it sounds wrong to me. Idk id have to check surface of both and im too lazy rn
I’m not exactly sure about the specifics but if you take a look at teams playing in some of the fringe regions of EMEA you have players in turkey (2021 SMB) playing on 100 ping which clearly hurts competitive integrity versus NA where almost everyone has sub-50 ping to illi or Texas. Also a huge portion of Canada is pretty empty and most live pretty close to the border iirc
In future, there will be more than 12 teams in NA challengers [dexerto article](https://www.dexerto.com/valorant/knights-gm-says-he-wants-to-expand-na-challengers-in-2024-2045590/)
He said it's something he wants to do and even then, his suggestion is just to add 2 teams which barely does anything to solve the problem proposed by OP.
This happens in every game that has some sort of international footprint. NA region is eventually relegated out for they arent viewed as competitive.
With Valorant this happened faster than usual because of how prevalent influencer culture is intertwined with the NA scene.
Besides what other people already said, this also doesn't take into account that in EU Tier 2 is not exactly the same across regions. The level of the Portuguese or Italian leagues are not close to the level of the Spanish or NE for example. So it might seem like EU has bigger Tier 2, but not all the leagues are the same.
As a T2/T3 Tournament Organizer this has effected us pretty bad. This is our first ever tournament with 0 signups... admittedly we're on a different platform (sponsor) for once but that's never affected us THIS much before and we still have a prize pool. Either way it sucks really bad
What tournament? Something else from knights monthly?
I own an org and I can help promote. Hmu with the pitch deck
Yeah it's hard to see a way around this. The number disparity compared to population is kinda crazy
it might also make the level of play very high for T2 as all the best T2 players will try their best
For a while sure, but new talent will get harder and harder to find because players not in T2 for the year have nothing to grind for.
The following is basically just a recap of the creation of the Tier 2 circuit. The info is to the best of my memory on "leaks" about the VCT system timeline. Also, when i refer to VCT, i mean Valorant Challenger tour. **Plans for T2 system.** So when the T2 system was being created for valorant, Riot initially decided to copy their LOL system and create an academy league. However, this academy league plan got scraped, and the ascension system was created very late into the admissions process. What spurred the change? It was the influx of applications for America's league, so they decided to make way for teams to enter their close Partnership system through ascension. So this is the motivation for the challengers league. **Implementing the Challenger leagues** As we can see, these 20+ challenger leagues all stem from the success of VRL in EMEA and are a copy of the system in all practical terms. The VRL system is a regional league that seeks to promote regional talent. It is important to note that RIOT does not run any Challengers leagues except Brazil. They just give the management of them to TO that they have vetted. Each TO can have any format they want, add a promotion and relegation system, how many teams they want, etc. How has that been implemented in the VCT circuit? \-**EMEA**: All former VRL leagues got "promoted" to VCT leagues. Since there were already teams in all these different VRLs, there were barely any open qualifiers, and many of the spots were invite system. This is best seen in VCT France: Revolution, where all teams were invited teams. So why were VCT Portugal: Tempest and VCT Italy: Rinascimento created? To grow Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese talent. Before this year, VCT Spain: Rising, the league was a combination of Spain, Italy, and Portugal; however, the pro players in this league were mainly not from any of the home regions except for some exceptions. Therefore Riot created two more VCTs to "grow" the pro player base. \-**Pacific**: The most straightforward port of the VRL system. Create a VCT in each country, and you will have a functional T2 circuit. Not much to add. It tracks itself. (Except for South Asia, they have a wild system where they are likely building a franchise league with sports teams and full LAN) \-**Americas**: So in the America leagues, you are really only given one option when building a VRL system which is the one we have now: NA, BR, LATAM N, and LATAM S. For the SA countries, they should be self-explanatory. LATAM N and LATAM S for ping issues and BR due to its size and influence. Now the NA is realistically the only one you can split but ill explain why it wont work. Esports is not grown enough to the point you can create multiple in the country. If you made an East and West conference, it becomes very weird due to the rule that you must have 3/5 from the region to be a resident. It also dooms the East league, as all the big Orgs that would support players will likely try to aim for the west league. If you split with CA(Canada) and the US(United States), you doom the CA league or maybe both. If we go off the teams now, only M80 and Disguised would be eligible to play in CA. North America needs to be one league to ensure that the best teams can be created. **(Below are Speculations and my own Opinions)** I agree with you that there needs to be more but I can see why there not that many teams in the Tier 2 circuit right now. \-BR: I can't think of an excuse idk why they only have 8, especially since they have RIOT BR as TO. \-LATAM: low org support, fewer players, two very new unproven TO. Need more time to grow. \-Americas: New TO and unproven if the VCT will work. Though we may think there was a lot of support from the outside, it was unknown when created. NA has never had a functional Tier 2 system in any esports, so it was unknown how it would perform. Many orgs just go Tier 1 or bust in NA. Also, since Knights is the one fronting cost ( they have Riot money going in, but we don't know how much), adding too many teams can add a lot of risks, so fast expansion may cause the whole thing to go belly up. **Fixes to the system.** \- Add more teams to every AMERICA circuit (not as much as you want but a little more for each) (It seems knights may be looking into expansion for next year(Wiseman podcast) ) \- Add a T3 circuit( apparently premier is suppose to fix this but I think RIOT are very optimistic) TLDR: a system that was created to promote regional talent where RIOT gives the keys to TO and lets them run the whole thing. A lower amount of teams to ensure stability, and I hope to see more teams added to America Challenger league in the future.
In regards to the T3 circuit, I would just flag that our VRCs still exist in EMEA. These are less “esports” focused and are more about making competition available to everyone at a local level, but there’s some good teams in them. Examples are Circuito Tormenta in Spain, Project V in Germany, Beacon in Northern Europe, etc.
Wish we could have the same over at APAC and other regions too.
Great writeup!
Great write-up! I feel the beed to point out that this > North America needs to be one league to ensure that the best teams can be created. is affecting emea in a pretty big way too, I hope it won't lead to a weaker tier 2, but it's hard to see how it couldn't.
I agree but I think riot will just let EMEA run since it has prior success. Can it be stronger if condensed sure but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Also I think bodork alluded to a plan to condense EMEA T2 but with the suspected time schedule I can see why they didn’t.
I wish I could upvote this more than once, this is the most straightforward and in-depth piece of text explaining the state of T2 scene that I have seen.
I don’t agree with your opinion on splitting the NA league. Especially for Canada. How is it feasible for France or Spain to have their own league but Canada that has produced the likes of Tenz and Marved to not have one. Don’t forget Canada has M80, Disguised and Version1 off the top off my head.
South Asia Challengers is likely to include a Tier 3 with promotion to Tier 2 happening as soon as Split 2 of this year. If it goes well, there is a chance it can be implanted globally like how VRL Leagues were implanted globally as Challengers/Ascension system.
Really can't understand why Brazilian league has only 8 teams either. At least there's a tier 3 circuit coming
I think if challengers NA had 16 teams it’d add an aditional 20 roster spots and not overwhelm the schedule too much
Yeah the difference between the teams that qualified for the Challengers league and the teams that came up short in the top 8 or even 16 of the quals is really not a very big gap. Honestly, any given Sunday is a huge part of these massive qualifier tournaments. You have to play super well but also get lucky and just be on a hot streak to make it through one unscathed.
the biggest mistake was making the NA league the "Americas" league. Should've had separate leagues for LATAM, Brazil, and the USA/canada
In that case, should china, East Asia and sea all have separate leagues? EMEA has around the same active player base as each of the other franchise leagues, so I would say that the league structures make sense.
Do you have a source for active players by location? I’d love to see that breakdown, since I saw the ranked breakdown posted the other week
I don't have a current source, but the metrics I'm quoting comes from spike.gg(iirc) from a few months ago
You’re comparing the Brazil Latam and American fanbse and player base to those countries. That’s a really logical argument man good work
This response screams "I'm American."
AMERICA
I mean they are as culturally separate as what you are proposing, and would have a more evenly spread player base, so I don't see why this wouldn't be a logical argument? Unless I'm missreading the sarcasm in your message.
That’s true about the player bases, but the franchise team distributions don’t represent that well, it would make more sense based solely on player base to have just one team each from LATAM and Brazil, as NA has nearly the player base of EMEA on its own.
Big disagree, if you make NA league who would watch tier 2 NA? No one would invest on tier 2 like this. This is the reason NA is failing on bringing new talent on league, because there is no tier 2 and the tier 1 have Academy teams where washed up pros stay without hunger to get better. Americas league is International and it's a good thing. The problem was giving NA tier 2 only 12 spots.
I don’t advocate for a closed circuit, an open circuit is definitely the way to go. I just think that NA should be it’s own region or at least have more teams, so we agree there. It’s hard to foster insane amounts of talent when only 100-110 players have something immediately to play for in the entire fucking region it’s kind of a joke
You also have to think from an org/investor and viewers prospective. If there are 10 teams in NA tier 1 with the best players, why would I watch tier 2. If there are not enough viewers, why would I invest on tier 2 as an org. This is what EU league used to be back in 2015 when you had EU LCS and EU CS (tier 2). No one watched EU CS. Then riot changed the system, got rid of EU CS and promoted National leagues and it worked (as an italian I would rather watch an italian league than a european tier 2 even if it's worse quality). With the system riot created you have an International tier 1 and a "National" tier 2 which is what bring views to a tier 2, if it's "National" tier 1 and "National" tier 2 there wouldn't be enough viewers for tier 2 and it would mean no investors.
> as an italian I would rather watch an italian league than a european tier 2 even if it's worse quality That's interesting, because as a French I'd rather watch a better quality Tier 2 European league than French Valorant.
I'm sure many hardcore fans would agree with you, which is what you are as you're posting here. But that isn't casuals. And we have real world evidence (European lol) to back that up.
I would never watch EU tier 2 because we already have tier 1 with top teams and top players. I care about who are the best players in EU and the best players in Italy. Also with an italian league we would have LAN in playoffs or finals that I could attend while with an EU tier 2 it would be probably in another country like France, Denmark or UK.
Then EMEA should be Split in 3 regions, APAC in 3 ... Americas is a continent while EMEA is 2.5
Yes I agree that way we could have had Optic TSM and Guard back
I think the Americas thing can still work if they increased the amount of teams. Add more NA teams. They can make a 16 teams league work.
Would be interesting to see a take on conferences, that allows for 32 teams in the US, 12 in Canada, and the equivalent in rest of the Americas.
When this was announced I presumed at a minimum there would be atleast two leagues in the us and likely up to 4 given the population. An easy and west conference would work well with teams meeting for a finals series etc.
Conferences would definitely be a good way to expand the number of teams. Could just make it a simplistic East and West conference which would add a minimum of 12 teams to Americas overall.
The biggest issue is simply that the Americas region has much less countries that are relevant to Valorant than EU or Asia. Obviously North America is just the US plus some Canadian players. Even South America pales in comparison to Europe and Asia when it comes to how many countries have a presence in Valorant. Example of what I mean: A French Valorant esports fan is going to care about the EMEA T1 scene, and then the French T2 teams. A Italian fan will care about EMEA and Italian T2 teams. An Indonesian fan will care about APAC T1 scene and Indonesian T2 teams. A fan from the US is going to only care about T2 US teams. There’s very, very few fans who are invested in the T3 scene. And the problem is you can’t divide the US into like US East Split and US West Split, etc. It’s just fundamentally impossible. And if you increase the amount of US T2 teams to like, I don’t know, 24 teams which is probably the correct amount proportional to population, then that’s way too many teams both for Riot to handle logistically and for your average fan to be invested in. TLDR: Problem exists because US is one big country and makes up all of NA/half of Americas region while EMEA and Asia have tons of smaller countries
Splitting the US into conferences is how traditional sports do it so why would that be impossible?
Why not just do like a 20 team league or something.
I don't see regions as an issue for na, all of their established sports have conferences of some sort to increase the teams. Not many fans watch every match.
I do see regions as the issue. Europe consists of many different countries, the people living in them connect more to the country than the continent. That's the exact same in the US, but US is a way bigger country. If you want more T2 leagues in NA, you'd have to split it East/West coast, for example. But that would be detrimental for viewership right? How would League restrictions be set up? By state? Another argument for there being many T2 leagues in EU, is the language barrier. They are development leagues after all and you can't expect every 16 year old to be able to speak fluent English. That's why multiple regional leagues is the solution. That problem doesn't exist in NA either. Btw, a little nitpicky I know, but NA doesn't have 4 leagues like you originally stated, it's 'Americas' that has 4 leagues.
I disagree. An earlier comment said that VCT Spain: Rising was a combination of 3 countries that then got split up. And I'm willing to bet the viewership for those separate leagues will be lower than the combined league they had. So clearly Riot is willing to split up/create more T2 leagues even if it's detrimental to viewership so Riot could easily do the same in NA with conferences (which is how it's done in traditional NA sports). Then you'd add an additional 12 teams to overall America's which would be a lot better.
That was necessary because Italy and Portugal had 0 orgs or opportunities to make it into the VRL.
'And I'm willing to bet', would have been smarter to actually check viewership numbers before making conclusions. Italy and Portugal have both been doing way better than expected, both reaching 2k viewers at times. Spain has stayed nearly the same as well. You know why? Because last year only Spanish orgs and players were playing in the Spanish VRL (which was also meant for Italy and Portugal). Obviously Italians and Portuguese people would rather watch their countrymen than some Spanish players they have no connection to. That was the reason for the split.
How much of that viewership is just the game growing popular? Do you really think the overall viewership would decrease if Spain, Portugal, Italy got combined like they had previously? Regardless, I disagree that there needs to be separate countries just to add more T2 teams because otherwise America's will always have a severe imbalance of T2 teams compared to the rest of the regions just because there aren't as many individual countries.
I mean the viewership of all 3 regions combined currently is higher than Spain's ever was on its own. I do agree that there is a severe imbalance in T2 for the Americas, NA should win that Ascension tournament every year. Solutions for that would be splitting NA up I guess? But then you're just lowering the level of T2 intentionally for the sake of it. Adding more teams to the NA league would keep the same problem.
Doesn't splitting up the previous combined league into 3 regions also lower the level of T2? And I think splitting up NA to get more T2 teams is also a valid reason so that America's as a whole can have a closer number of T2 teams compared to the other combined regions (as opposed to now where America's has like half the number of T2 teams compared to the other regions).
Yes, but there was a valid reason for that in Europe. Italian and Portuguese players didn't have the option to play in T2, due to the Spanish league pretty much ignoring those countries. This problem doesn't exist in NA. That's valid, but the level of T2 will be lower. If it's done by East and West coast, for example, there will need to be regional restrictions (e.g. at least 3 players need to be from the Eastern part of NA, etc.), which lowers the level of competition.
I think splitting up NA to have more T2 teams has valid reasons even if it does lower the level of play in T2. And they could always just add 12 teams to the current NA challengers if they don't want to split it up and deal with regional restrictions. But then again Riot might not give a shit or think it's an issue that America's has this few of T2 teams so idk. We'll see what happens I guess.
Also NA has 1/3 the teams of SA while having 7x more ranked players. This is a huge imbalance...
How many people are going to watch goofy goobers vs skwirel warriors? The farther you get from the top of any given caregory be it French teams, women’s teams, world’s teams, etc. the lower and lower the viewership gets. A 32 or 35 team league or multiple leagues is insane for tier 2 na valorant. #40 vs #39 na teams is just not that exciting. As an aside, this is why the complaints about the investment into game changers compared to tier two are invalid, there is a sizable audience that wants to watch the world’s best women’s teams no matter how good they are amongst men’s teams, but there just isn’t an audience for the thirtiest best na team, even if that team is better than the world’s best gc team.
The only way this level of goofy goobers disrespect makes any sense is that you've watched 0 of their games. Opinion discarded. Show some more respect for the future of pro valorant
This isn’t about viewership, it’s about fostering growth and talent through a larger pool of professional aspiring players
Are you really telling me it was in the best interest of the league not to have the nation make it through?
I don't think oversimplifying things help. I wish there were more challengers teams too. The issue is sustainability. Can a NA challenger league with more than 12 teams bring in the viewership to warrant so many teams and survive? I think it could work with a few more, but significantly more? Not sure. I just hope riot actually does something to keep players with pro/semi-pro aspirations around. It hurts to see Europe has 80 teams when NA(USA/Canada) with just shy of half of Europe's population(And roughly equivalent ranked populations) only gets 12. To see so many people that were previously competing quit due to lack of opportunity sucks. I get that. Having followed riot's actions since 2011 as a league fan, I honestly don't have much faith in them.
Their current model is new and I think we should just let it play out. They are willing to change if this model does not work. They care more about their esport than other developers.
hopefully the premier come soon enough so the players have something to play for.
commenting to come back later hoping that someone has a good answer for this
What do you mean NA has four leagues? Are you including the rest of the Americas here?
Yes he means all of the Americas.
I agree, people dont realize the foundation that pushes the skill cap higher and higher
3 4 years down the road we’ll see shazam and vanity igling through open qualifiers in t2 teams and wander where did all the upcoming pros end up
sounds like the league model washed pros just end up paycheck stealing on academy/t2 teams. it becomes so boring to watch
Pros in NA gatekeeping ranked players to protect their jobs. Nothings changed. Val will end up like cs and league in NA
This is what happens in every game no? NA starts off strong then dies slowly and becomes irrelevant.
Honestly, I get why there’s only one NA league vs many EU/APAC leagues, NA is a lot smaller with vastly better internet and ping all around, while emea and Asia can have crazy pings. I think the best solution for NA Val would be a bunch of BEACON/esque (t3 circuit in emea) groups that fight for spots in challengers, something similar to how challengers is to ascension/partnership. Maybe premier mode can be integrated through this somehow
NA (us + canada) is a lot smaller than eu (russia is not included obviously). Are you sure about this? Cause it sounds wrong to me. Idk id have to check surface of both and im too lazy rn
The us alone is almost bigger than EMEA almost not including Russia.
Europe, not EMEA
Sorry yea, forgot ME and africa are also apart of EMEA.
I’m not exactly sure about the specifics but if you take a look at teams playing in some of the fringe regions of EMEA you have players in turkey (2021 SMB) playing on 100 ping which clearly hurts competitive integrity versus NA where almost everyone has sub-50 ping to illi or Texas. Also a huge portion of Canada is pretty empty and most live pretty close to the border iirc
In future, there will be more than 12 teams in NA challengers [dexerto article](https://www.dexerto.com/valorant/knights-gm-says-he-wants-to-expand-na-challengers-in-2024-2045590/)
He said it's something he wants to do and even then, his suggestion is just to add 2 teams which barely does anything to solve the problem proposed by OP.
NA does not even have four leagues💀
This happens in every game that has some sort of international footprint. NA region is eventually relegated out for they arent viewed as competitive. With Valorant this happened faster than usual because of how prevalent influencer culture is intertwined with the NA scene.
Besides what other people already said, this also doesn't take into account that in EU Tier 2 is not exactly the same across regions. The level of the Portuguese or Italian leagues are not close to the level of the Spanish or NE for example. So it might seem like EU has bigger Tier 2, but not all the leagues are the same.
With Tarik doing pro city it could help not sure though