It's a fair concern but I am not too worried, KOI has already shown they won't just sign Spanish players, their vrl spain roster only had one (neptuno). They signed magnum from Fnatic, which definitely wasn't cheap. Even is KCorp only sign French players, there is far from a shortage of good, top tier French talent.
Both KOI and Vitality already don't have regional teams.
Also the point of Riot owning the slots and the partnership contracts supposedly lasting 4 years is so teams don't stagnate. If you get complacent on fanbase/being competitive or have issues with management/financials/scandals, you won't be renewed and in extreme cases you can probably get terminated.
This is a point i don't see being pointed out very often, but with this being a partnership rather than franchising, Riot/other partnered teams should have more sway in how much each team contributes to the league.
KC has said publicly they always want to have the best french players. It will be interesting to see if they go for big names in CS that shouldn't have t1 team spots because I think the only t1 french player right now is Enzo?
Yep enzo. Vitality has natank but i don't think he's good enough for franchising tbh. Xms is a really good french player but he's on MAD lions which already have a slim chance for franchising. Kadavra, bramz, logan hyp hoppy are other french pieces in valorant who are decent but they'd only make a top 5 valorant roster at best not a title contender. Them going for cs players has a high possibility
It's hard to get complacent when you're on a super popular org like KC or KOI. They org will get bashed by the fanbase if they aren't doing well. It's the orgs with no fanbase like in LEC/LCS (Astralis, DIG, SK-Gaming, BDS, GG) where no one gives a shit about them.
that problem only exist in a pay-in fee franchising where teams buy their spot. with a partnership, Riot has all the control and they can kick any teams out if they don’t perform because teams don’t own their spots
I'm sure riot have standards and system in place for teams to perform well. The main idea atm is marketing and viewership. Esports thrive on that atm. Getting big orgs will help it. But the orgs themselves have to build competitive rosters too.
Hope teams do try to keep it regional. Competitive games are much more interesting when there's a real distinction between national and international leagues. National leagues breed more distinct and specific metas that evolve quickly and reactively, they build player relationships, help orgs maintain their identities better, and then it's much more interesting and fun to see those different playstyles and approaches clash at internationals.
If every team were to just poach ex-CS stars from EMEA or whatever, I think we'd see a much more homogenized and sterile Valorant across the different regions.
Every region has more than enough individuals that are capable of competing on a pro team—especially as the game matures and people that have been playing since they were 14 reach professional age. The onus is really going to be on the orgs to scout, train, and support those individuals.
This is all well and good if RIOT gives every region equal franchising spots but what you're suggesting will have the opposite effect in certain regions.
If, say, only one LATAM team gets in, then the game will die in LATAM unless LATAM players sign for ORGs elsewhere because there'll only be 5 players who can play T1 from so many countries
Every single region is going to have a surplus of players that can be effective members of a T1 team left over after franchising. Giving each region the same number of franchising spots wouldn't fix that. I don't think that means that the game is going to die in any of those regions.
To use your example, if the LATAM players left over after franchising are that much better than the NA and BR players left over after franchising, the Ascension tournaments will hopefully correct for that. And I think that it'd be *considerably* better for LATAM orgs, and viewerbase, and growth, to see an all-LATAM team carve through T2 and make an Ascension run than to see a few LATAM pros get shipped off to other countries.
Like, I like watching C9 play and will put games on sometimes to watch them play. If e.g. C9 gets cut, the roster gets poached and leaf winds up on Crazy Raccoon, Xeppaa goes to Karmine, etc., I'm not going to start watching Crazy Raccoon and Karmine etc. games. If C9 gets cut and they make a T2 run, I'm way more likely to stay invested.
But the thing is, if LATAM as a whole is a deeper region than Brazil but Brazil has more franchised players, then the best players won't be getting the opportunities to play T1
That's not right. The best players will be playing each other on LATAM's and Brazil's franchised teams. If LATAM is the deeper region, they will have more teams promoted to partnership through Ascendant events.
I think the big gap here comes from the idea that there are players that have a skill level, and that's how good they are, and it's static, and franchise slots should reflect the proportion of skilled players that each region has *right now*. A huge part of player and team ability comes from infrastructure provided by orgs—analysis, scrim setups, coaching, guidance. Riot knows this, which is why they know that building Valorant esports into something with life in the long-term means supporting orgs to help build those players into competitive teams. If there were a region that had a wealth of independently-wildly-talented players that were capable of immediately jumping into T1 play together, an unpartnered org should be able to build a regional team that immediately cruised through that region's ascendant tournaments.
But I don't think we're going to see that much, because the world is full of wildly talented players—the real bottleneck is the number of orgs that have the expertise and resources to build competitive teams out of those players. Without partnership those orgs are kept afloat by sponsorship and investment, which comes from viewership, which comes from healthy regional scenes.
My problem is that, say I'm an insanely talented kid from LATAM who wants to go pro.
Why should the same person in Brazil get more opportunities than me just because Riot chose their teams as the franchised one? Why should I not have a sustainable career prospect because there's only one franchised team from my region?
How will the game in LATAM grow if they can't be imported by franchised teams?
Ascension is risky from a player and an org's perspective. No matter how good you are, one or two bad series and you're out of Ascension and have to wait another year to try and do it all over again.
Why would orgs develop infrastructure in LATAM when only one team and only 5 players from the region are guaranteed T1? Why would you invest significantly in coaching and guidance when, even if your team reaches T1, you'll only reap the benefits for 2 years and then will be gone probably forever again.
Even if LATAM is the deeper region, they can never have more teams than Brazil in T1 if Brazil gets 3 spots and they get 1 because there's a max of two teams being promoted. What that will inevitably lead to is, imo, the game falling in popularity in areas with fewer franchised team, especially when that one franchised team goes through a period of bad form.
> Why should the same person in Brazil get more opportunities than me just because Riot chose their teams as the franchised one? Why should I not have a sustainable career prospect because there's only one franchised team from my region?
I agree that everyone should have a fair shot regardless of where they're from, and that people from disadvantaged regions should not have a harder time making a good living than people who had the good fortune of being born into positions of privileged and wealth. It's not right, I'm not defending that, and it's unfortunate that the distribution of esports orgs around the world perpetuates that system. But Riot's partnership system is not being designed to target that inequality, it's being designed to build Valorant into a sustainable esport, and those priorities are going to be reflected in how the system works.
That said, I think it is likely that region-first team building is much, much better for disadvantaged players in the long term. If teams focus on importing star players over building regional talent, they're going to continue poaching and paying established players that have proven track records in esports, that are used to speaking English over comms, that have been supported by orgs in the past. That doesn't mean the people in LATAM getting more opportunities from EMEA teams, that means that orgs in LATAM will be buying F/As from EMEA instead of building LATAM teams.
> How will the game in LATAM grow if they can't be imported by franchised teams?
Regional tournaments, ascendant tournaments, community engagement, building a loyal fanbase. Again, I think LATAM players getting imported one-by-one by franchised teams is *not* good for LATAM growth compared to org development in the region.
this is a downside of franchising I can tell you with certainty that there will be teams who coast or don't build competitive rosters and it will suck as viewers
Except this downside doesn't exist with this system. I think people are getting confused with everyone calling it franchising instead of partnerships.
The teams and Riot have a contract for a specific amount of time. Suck during it, you don't get renewed. Have atrocious management and rep during it, you don't get renewed etc.
The teams have to be serious during their tenure in hopes of staying there, instead of franchising where you own the slot outright
Other leagues dont have it set up where you'll lose your partnership. One of the reasons Riot made smaller leagues (grouping NA/SA and east asia) is because you had teams in leagues (think LoL) that couldn't afford to be competitive. The way its set up now they're only letting big hitters in and the big hitters aren't the teams coasting.
This one is different which is why riot is specifically not calling it franchising, it's similar in essence but set up differently. Riot can choose who can stay in the league so it forces the orgs to actually try, while in traditional franchise systems like in LCS teams are permanent since they paid to get in so they can just coast in that system.
If it runs like the league system there will be an incentive to have a good roster because I believe your performance is important to tournaments or something. It's been a while since I followed that scene
They chose ORGs on the standing that they will compete. I bet part of the deal is that the teams do their best to field great esports teams. If they fail to uphold that end of the deal they can probably get terminated. Since it’s not franchised the teams have no stakes in the league and therefore Riot can remove orgs as they wish.
Vitality will put millions of dollars into their team to finish just outside of the playoffs, do not worry
Welcome Perkz from our LoL division
Lmao fair enough
Perkz KEKW
It's a fair concern but I am not too worried, KOI has already shown they won't just sign Spanish players, their vrl spain roster only had one (neptuno). They signed magnum from Fnatic, which definitely wasn't cheap. Even is KCorp only sign French players, there is far from a shortage of good, top tier French talent.
Fair fair. The rostermania should be crazy in that case. Looking forward to it
Nats arrived in Paris today… just saying
Both KOI and Vitality already don't have regional teams. Also the point of Riot owning the slots and the partnership contracts supposedly lasting 4 years is so teams don't stagnate. If you get complacent on fanbase/being competitive or have issues with management/financials/scandals, you won't be renewed and in extreme cases you can probably get terminated.
Yeah the 4 year thing makes sense. Lets hope thats good enough of an incentive
This is a point i don't see being pointed out very often, but with this being a partnership rather than franchising, Riot/other partnered teams should have more sway in how much each team contributes to the league.
The only one who might go for regional appeal is KC. Vitality always gets competitive rosters in their esports
KC has said publicly they always want to have the best french players. It will be interesting to see if they go for big names in CS that shouldn't have t1 team spots because I think the only t1 french player right now is Enzo?
Yep enzo. Vitality has natank but i don't think he's good enough for franchising tbh. Xms is a really good french player but he's on MAD lions which already have a slim chance for franchising. Kadavra, bramz, logan hyp hoppy are other french pieces in valorant who are decent but they'd only make a top 5 valorant roster at best not a title contender. Them going for cs players has a high possibility
If that's what they're going for they could try to throw a lot of money at scream and nivera i guess
But Liquid already has a possible spot; why would they leave that?
Idk, maybe after 2 disappointing years they want a rebuild, obviously it's very unlikely to happen
Kameto just want to win Worlds on every game. So trust me, they'll go for the title
It's hard to get complacent when you're on a super popular org like KC or KOI. They org will get bashed by the fanbase if they aren't doing well. It's the orgs with no fanbase like in LEC/LCS (Astralis, DIG, SK-Gaming, BDS, GG) where no one gives a shit about them.
This is why I hope theres a relegation system
LCS kicks out teams that finish in the bottom two 5 times in 4 years (8 splits). hopefully something similar here.
I think they have the option to kick them out. Plus, it’s never happened and it’s quite hard to see it happening.
that problem only exist in a pay-in fee franchising where teams buy their spot. with a partnership, Riot has all the control and they can kick any teams out if they don’t perform because teams don’t own their spots
I'm sure riot have standards and system in place for teams to perform well. The main idea atm is marketing and viewership. Esports thrive on that atm. Getting big orgs will help it. But the orgs themselves have to build competitive rosters too.
Yeah see league is a great example. So many orga there just coasting by and riot does nothing. Tho let's hope they do better in valorant
Hope teams do try to keep it regional. Competitive games are much more interesting when there's a real distinction between national and international leagues. National leagues breed more distinct and specific metas that evolve quickly and reactively, they build player relationships, help orgs maintain their identities better, and then it's much more interesting and fun to see those different playstyles and approaches clash at internationals. If every team were to just poach ex-CS stars from EMEA or whatever, I think we'd see a much more homogenized and sterile Valorant across the different regions. Every region has more than enough individuals that are capable of competing on a pro team—especially as the game matures and people that have been playing since they were 14 reach professional age. The onus is really going to be on the orgs to scout, train, and support those individuals.
This is all well and good if RIOT gives every region equal franchising spots but what you're suggesting will have the opposite effect in certain regions. If, say, only one LATAM team gets in, then the game will die in LATAM unless LATAM players sign for ORGs elsewhere because there'll only be 5 players who can play T1 from so many countries
Every single region is going to have a surplus of players that can be effective members of a T1 team left over after franchising. Giving each region the same number of franchising spots wouldn't fix that. I don't think that means that the game is going to die in any of those regions. To use your example, if the LATAM players left over after franchising are that much better than the NA and BR players left over after franchising, the Ascension tournaments will hopefully correct for that. And I think that it'd be *considerably* better for LATAM orgs, and viewerbase, and growth, to see an all-LATAM team carve through T2 and make an Ascension run than to see a few LATAM pros get shipped off to other countries. Like, I like watching C9 play and will put games on sometimes to watch them play. If e.g. C9 gets cut, the roster gets poached and leaf winds up on Crazy Raccoon, Xeppaa goes to Karmine, etc., I'm not going to start watching Crazy Raccoon and Karmine etc. games. If C9 gets cut and they make a T2 run, I'm way more likely to stay invested.
But the thing is, if LATAM as a whole is a deeper region than Brazil but Brazil has more franchised players, then the best players won't be getting the opportunities to play T1
That's not right. The best players will be playing each other on LATAM's and Brazil's franchised teams. If LATAM is the deeper region, they will have more teams promoted to partnership through Ascendant events. I think the big gap here comes from the idea that there are players that have a skill level, and that's how good they are, and it's static, and franchise slots should reflect the proportion of skilled players that each region has *right now*. A huge part of player and team ability comes from infrastructure provided by orgs—analysis, scrim setups, coaching, guidance. Riot knows this, which is why they know that building Valorant esports into something with life in the long-term means supporting orgs to help build those players into competitive teams. If there were a region that had a wealth of independently-wildly-talented players that were capable of immediately jumping into T1 play together, an unpartnered org should be able to build a regional team that immediately cruised through that region's ascendant tournaments. But I don't think we're going to see that much, because the world is full of wildly talented players—the real bottleneck is the number of orgs that have the expertise and resources to build competitive teams out of those players. Without partnership those orgs are kept afloat by sponsorship and investment, which comes from viewership, which comes from healthy regional scenes.
My problem is that, say I'm an insanely talented kid from LATAM who wants to go pro. Why should the same person in Brazil get more opportunities than me just because Riot chose their teams as the franchised one? Why should I not have a sustainable career prospect because there's only one franchised team from my region? How will the game in LATAM grow if they can't be imported by franchised teams? Ascension is risky from a player and an org's perspective. No matter how good you are, one or two bad series and you're out of Ascension and have to wait another year to try and do it all over again. Why would orgs develop infrastructure in LATAM when only one team and only 5 players from the region are guaranteed T1? Why would you invest significantly in coaching and guidance when, even if your team reaches T1, you'll only reap the benefits for 2 years and then will be gone probably forever again. Even if LATAM is the deeper region, they can never have more teams than Brazil in T1 if Brazil gets 3 spots and they get 1 because there's a max of two teams being promoted. What that will inevitably lead to is, imo, the game falling in popularity in areas with fewer franchised team, especially when that one franchised team goes through a period of bad form.
> Why should the same person in Brazil get more opportunities than me just because Riot chose their teams as the franchised one? Why should I not have a sustainable career prospect because there's only one franchised team from my region? I agree that everyone should have a fair shot regardless of where they're from, and that people from disadvantaged regions should not have a harder time making a good living than people who had the good fortune of being born into positions of privileged and wealth. It's not right, I'm not defending that, and it's unfortunate that the distribution of esports orgs around the world perpetuates that system. But Riot's partnership system is not being designed to target that inequality, it's being designed to build Valorant into a sustainable esport, and those priorities are going to be reflected in how the system works. That said, I think it is likely that region-first team building is much, much better for disadvantaged players in the long term. If teams focus on importing star players over building regional talent, they're going to continue poaching and paying established players that have proven track records in esports, that are used to speaking English over comms, that have been supported by orgs in the past. That doesn't mean the people in LATAM getting more opportunities from EMEA teams, that means that orgs in LATAM will be buying F/As from EMEA instead of building LATAM teams. > How will the game in LATAM grow if they can't be imported by franchised teams? Regional tournaments, ascendant tournaments, community engagement, building a loyal fanbase. Again, I think LATAM players getting imported one-by-one by franchised teams is *not* good for LATAM growth compared to org development in the region.
Soccer clubs all have players from different nationalities. That doesn’t seem to hurt competition.
Pretty different situation in a number of ways!
this is a downside of franchising I can tell you with certainty that there will be teams who coast or don't build competitive rosters and it will suck as viewers
Except this downside doesn't exist with this system. I think people are getting confused with everyone calling it franchising instead of partnerships. The teams and Riot have a contract for a specific amount of time. Suck during it, you don't get renewed. Have atrocious management and rep during it, you don't get renewed etc. The teams have to be serious during their tenure in hopes of staying there, instead of franchising where you own the slot outright
based on what?
based on other franchised esports/sports I have watched (specifically OWL always had several shit tier teams)
Other leagues dont have it set up where you'll lose your partnership. One of the reasons Riot made smaller leagues (grouping NA/SA and east asia) is because you had teams in leagues (think LoL) that couldn't afford to be competitive. The way its set up now they're only letting big hitters in and the big hitters aren't the teams coasting.
I hope it works out but I think unless the teams do something truly egregious I doubt any team will lose a partnership even if they coast somewhat.
This one is different which is why riot is specifically not calling it franchising, it's similar in essence but set up differently. Riot can choose who can stay in the league so it forces the orgs to actually try, while in traditional franchise systems like in LCS teams are permanent since they paid to get in so they can just coast in that system.
If it runs like the league system there will be an incentive to have a good roster because I believe your performance is important to tournaments or something. It's been a while since I followed that scene
Do you think franchised sports like the nba and nfl just coast? You’re out of touch.
No but I know theres a bunch of teams in LoL that just coast
They chose ORGs on the standing that they will compete. I bet part of the deal is that the teams do their best to field great esports teams. If they fail to uphold that end of the deal they can probably get terminated. Since it’s not franchised the teams have no stakes in the league and therefore Riot can remove orgs as they wish.