The Kickoff Bracket is Badly Made in its Theory

I'll be using Americas for this example, as I watch the most of that region. You can made your own brackets of the other regions easily, so maybe what I am saying isn't true for other regions and it ended up as a fine bracket there. The theory is still ass IMO.

Based on this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuB2NeKL7NI&t=208s (at 3:27)
with the seeding, and using the assumptions that:

1. Teams are ranked based on performance in the year prior, and offseasons mean nothing
2. The way teams ranked in Champions (ie. Lev was 3rd so they would be 1st in Americas) decides seeding for the bracket for Masters Bangkok
3. All 11 Teams from 2024 are ranked, and 2G gets the 12th place ranking

The bracket is incredibly badly made on a theory level for a competitive format

Based on the actual results, we would end up with this:
https://imgur.com/a/BbjZYHU

We have 100T and EG playing to play against LEV when 100T barely scraped into champs, and now if they win their first match against a solid team, they get to play a powerhouse of LEV for doing well??

Then we have the C9, FURIA, and KRU side, where every single one of those teams other than KRU I don't think a single person is rating top 6 in Americas, and one of them gets a free pass to the Upper Bracket semifinals

Then we have arguably the most egregious triple bracket of them all, where NRG is playing MIBR in the FIRST round. THIS MATCHUP IS BEING RATED THE SAME AS LOUD VS 2G AND C9 VS FURIA. And then whoever wins that gets to play SEN

Then we get G2 having a free little ride to upper bracket semifinals with LOUD vs 2G, which I don't understand how that comes up

My main concern with the bracket wouldn't be if they used last year's data (obviously they would, there's no defined rankings otherwise), my main issue is how they ranked the teams in the bracket.

I don't get the logic of putting the 5th best team (the cutoff of making it to champs) having to play the best team in Americas of the year before, when they should be getting rewarded for placing that high compared to their peers, and the 1st seeded team shouldn't be getting fked over for being good.

My new and (I think) more fair bracket would go a little something like this:

https://imgur.com/a/Vg03ESR

I like this bracket more, not based on the actual matchups or what they would end up as, but as the theory is more sound and rewards teams for doing well, not punishes them. In this bracket, we would have 4 matchups in round 1, where every single team would be paired with the worst team on the opposite side of them (imagine if it was ranked 1-8, and 1 played 8, 2 played 7, etc). This way, we would be able to have 4 matchups which could be ranked by who the best team would be to come out of it. So, from the 5th place and 12th place match, we could imagine that the 5th best team would come out of that (using the line of reasoning that if 12th place won it means they are the 5th best team). Through this, we can end up with a bracket where we would get the 1st seed of champs playing the theoretically worst team based on our rankings, 2nd playing the 2nd worst, etc etc. The actual matchups for this would end up being:

EG vs LOUD play LEV
100T vs 2G play KRU
NRG vs FURIA play SEN
C9 vs MIBR play G2

While the matchups are still not perfect, I think that if we are forced to use the rankings of the year before, this makes for a significantly better bracket than whatever the fuck riot cooked up, which doesn't seem to follow any line of reasoning, other than make the strong suffer for being strong.

TLDR: I yapped about how riot is braindead for making a bad bracket, MIBR plays NRG will play SEN in the bracket riot made, and riot's system for creating this bracket seems to punish strong teams for being good, which shouldn't exist in a sports environment

Edit: Apparently people have been using this unofficial bracket graphic as proof that the bracket that is in the official valorant video isn't the bracket. If you have proof that riot has said the bracket on the graphic will be the official graphic, please link it. Otherwise, watch that youtube video and check the timestamp to see what bracket I am referring to when I say the theory is badly made

ye coz like if a team changes whole team in offseason these aint make sense

#MVGA

yeah idk what riot was cooking here
its also fucking up the (new) players when the org is at fault for bad performance

for example aspas gets fucked over because mibr was hot ass last year

dont really understand the incentive behind it

i got my americas bracket like this https://imgur.com/W4tCoMK
i have my 1-4th based on champs performance, 5-6th based on who got higher seed in stage 2 playoffs/regular season, 7-11th based on stage 2 regular season, and 12th from ascension

basically LEV shouldnt be rewarded for performing great last year; what great intelligence you have!

i think it should just be a random draw with top 4 places in the higher bracket anyway makes it entirely fair

i think your assumed bracket is wrong
https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantCompetitive/comments/1h8p03z/2025_kickoff_brackets_graphic_unofficial_god_i/
here the bracket you think will be announced is wrong.
all I know is eg vs furia -> sen, so your bracket is definitely wrong.

It totally makes sense.. Sure some teams have changed rosters but it's still the same org.

thats how it was last years kickoff as well, eg fully revamped and still got #1 seed, nothing they can do unfortunately
and sen are fucked as well since nrg mogs them so gg and 4th seed kru get the freest opponents ever

It’s not for the teams it’s for the orgs

someone has to get the bad matchup, it isn't perfectly fair but looking at the bracket you sent it doesn't look all that bad (C9 vs FUR is egregious though)

this page has the exact bracket that you wanted
and it’s from the official website
https://valorantesports.com/en-US/news/vct-2025-season-start-eyntk