Apparently they had their NA spot already secured and Riot changed their mind last second. G2 would definitely have had the money to potentially buy out the entire OpTic roster. They could have built a brand in NA with the best roster in VCT history. Carlos really fucked up big time.

Their current roster is only ask and cloud, the rest is already gone.

for real, how did they go from one of the worst teams in terms of mental to one of the best in like two months? i hope they keep it up, their teamplay is so good, i wanna see them actually go far for once

val has more currently active players than csgo, but csgo (i would assume) has more total players (as in, people who have played in the past but might not necessarily play any more).

generally a game (esports or conventional sports) tends to be more interesting to watch if you've played it yourself and understand some of the details. so i feel like just taking active playerbase as a metric is a bit sketchy.

additionally, cs has been around much longer as an esport. it takes time to accumulate a loyal viewerbase. up until now, val hasn't even had a consistent format yet. i reckon the new league system, plus crowds at LANs, will probably do their part to help val gain more viewers.

The only correct answer

For the beginning, to build the eSport and accumulate regular viewers it's probably good to have a consistent basis of high clout teams like SEN, TSM, G2, etc, even if they perform worse than other teams. Don't forget Val viewership is still much lower than league or cs. This will last for 5 years, then we will see where it goes.

In football, the first league in England also waited a few decades before introducing promotion and relegation.

How was their group in Copenhagen easy? They literally had the finalist from Reykjavik in there

Is it though?

Can't blame them tbh

Rogue perhaps. They don't have a val team yet, but they're in LEC, they might have a chance at Val franchising anyway. At least they're on the shortlist.

Optic is the only team that has made it to the top 4 at three separate LANs. They were the best team in Reykjavik and deserved the win. This time they weren't, because other teams improved and I feel like optic kind of stagnated. They're still among the best though, sure M1 was unlucky for FPX and FNC but there is no asterisk for optic's Iceland win imo

Egg > fried chicken restaurant

Leviatán literally made it further than the Guard AND XSET under the exact same circumstances (first LAN, seeded into playoffs). KRÜ made it further than any NA team at champs. Optic is currently better than any SA team, surely, but the rest of NA is pretty mediocre at the moment.

Derke was #1 ACS at champions and #3 in Iceland 2021. Lay off the drugs man

Why are Guild frauds?

So ez

Well if you read past the headline, Brave was not benched for performance reasons.

I mean I don't think you can judge Boaster on his performance in Iceland. He is the IGL, there is a lot more to that role than just pew pew, and he had two players on his roster that he had very little time to prepare with, which means he had to do a lot more micromanagement during the game, which makes it incredibly hard to frag.

He clearly is not the best mechanical player, but he is one of the best IGLs, and honestly if you've watched EMEA challengers, he has stepped up his game mechanically. He was hitting shots like crazy in the group stage game and they only really stumbled in the last two matches against FPX and G2 after they were already qualified (which was concerning for sure, but overall Boaster specifically has looked good this year so far)