Long Post Ahead.
So, talks of the "recession" in E-sports and how its been disrupting orgs and their profits has been a big deal lately.
While riot is a major company with loads of investment money from Tencent (China), this does not confirm their competitive scene's relevance in other regions.
The main point of incentive for Sponsors to invest in Valorant teams is the visibility they can get, the possibility to get the brand out there,
But, this does not translate well to teams, as the necessity of results limits the amount of teams that can survive.
As we have seen in the scene there have been various ORGs with promissing teams that did not survive the test of time (Optic, Gamelanders, NIP) in the Valorant scene.
In result, taking players to obscurity with them.
What i propose is a form to give teams a secondary sense of income that would also incentivize results but also media forms:
Team Skins
Now you might be thinking; "we have been saying this for decades", and you are right, we the community have been craving such parafernalia.
BUT, what if this could be used to sustain and incentivize results? give teams a level of independence from their sponsors?
How about, teams in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 Scenes are able to pitch a simple INDIVIDUAL skin design to riot?
The Skin then would be priced as low as Battlepass. or cheaper.
about 50% of the money raised from such skins would be redirected to the team.
but the catch is that the skins would not be sold in the regular market, but at a "season market"
the skins would ramp up in value as the teams do well in the franchise, since there would be a new desire to support the winning teams, consequently increasing the amount of money teams make.
At the end of each year each team could then submit a new design to sell, just like sports jerseys.
the older designs would then be taken out of the season market, making them even more valuable, and since companies only care about money, this would mean they could then put these older team skins in the Market rotation, and get even more money as time goes on.
I know the counter would be that this is "too much work" for an "indie" company such as RIOT.
but this can be solved by simply NOT producing but inserting. the teams would make a simple png design that could just be "glued" to the weapon model, no fancy model remakes, just a "recoloring", think the velocity skinlinem, the model itself doesnt change, but the weapon color does.
For Tier 3 teams they could get one dimensional gun buddies with their logo on them. the act coin buddy model could be reused as a base!
Riot could then release Championship knife skins for the teams that won their tournaments, the models could be reused, the designs would be team-submited, and both riot and the teams would cash out a large amount.
This in turn would make it appealing for orgs to make teams in an attempt to get that skin money.
Look, i know there are flaws in this plan, and id be happy to hear some constructive criticism, but i think this could work out really well!
Discord