Yep Latam is stacked this year I am expecting a strong push in ascension from them.

The only memory I have of TSM is how every iteration of their roster was super hyped nd had huge fanbase beefing with Sen fanbase but TSM always ended up losing to random teams getting eliminated early and fans slowly gave up on them with time

Also I keep an eye on 9z team Nagz delz1k nd Taco all are playing for them this year looking to re-work the magic of past.

Nobody can forget man I was so heartbroken with that chronicle ace to deny in overtime. I wanted that underdog run to go all the way ....

Aspas arrives here in final boss form accompanied by NZR.

Lewn is impressive
Kush too
Socialbee is great
Minny
Profek
Kaajak

I think these nd names mentioned already by others is comprehensive list for now.

I believe in what Engh said - Last year he thought that you need to play meta comps to win but he realised with time that you can actually win with any comp as long as you understand what you are doing nd you put enough practice to make it work.
I still believe 2021 international teams had some of the brightest minds as their coach nd if they believe nd play unique comps nd win with it others can also do so if they are good at their work .

Thai ranked derby now broadcasted nd 'bought' to you by Soop

I have no idea how Tomix hasn't been scouted to play in proper Tier 2 with an org yet. He literally dominates open brackets with absolute no namer squads going +15-20 as his whole team goes negative. He is literally a very solid player if you are an org in India, JP or China looking to have a solid roster on slightly lower budget. Maybe he doesn't want to play as of now otherwise scouts wouldn't hv missed him surely.

Sacred keeps poking in GE's reply though I am sure if opportunity arises Jerrwin nd Sacred may just play for GE

It happens sometimes he is farming the region nd premier both this year, is part of Oasis gaming currently was good with VLT too

Its good to be optimistic bro but JA literally ran down whole GE on ISO in off-season and Venka diffed Patrick on worse ping in first match itself

All your top T2 teams nd 2 franchised teams played in this tourney, quite a shame they all got cleared by a Tier 3 player playing in worst region no ?- and yess btw the guy on 2nd also came up from same 'worst' region of valorant
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/2208/predator-league-asia-pacific-2025

Cmon bro that academy team isnt going to learn anything new sitting in India and playing with others there. There's a huge difference in big budget main roster nd academy roster. The current GE acad team's value you can judge by the fact that Jaggi rejected the offer from them and he is yet to play in Indian T2. This academy isnt a pipeline to main roster of GE , its being done so they can continue in franchising when re-evaluation happens

I mean evryone knows that if this doesn't work out just throw in the towel put 3 Indians give them a good import duelist and IGL(even they should be someone like Azys who have played so much in India that they care about Indian valo) and let them play. I mean at worst you will come at same rank you come every year just lose some more rounds how does it matter. Atleast Indians will play for their flag nd pride nd kids can dream that one day I will take their place and represent my country nd then we will win something

I am an OG here from the time DM played for GE lol but yess Skrossi's popularity was certainly one of the reasons. I still remember those days before Skrossi had played international nd choked :( we used to have Valcomp sub full of Skrossi ranked highlights

Our IGL !!

and most importantly the 2 who got the chance were former GE pros GE is yet to give a chance to any Indian who wasn't involved with GE pre-franchising in any capacity

GE was chosen bcz back then they had biggest fanbase in Indian Valorant, an old and reliable setup, past experience in Korea and had worked with Riot in past in LOL

not really if Riot wants both Orangutan and RNTX have structure and money to be a top tier org . They definitely have options

https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/RNTX%20rawfiul%20%E7%A5%9E%23BOO/overview- all time top 10 in world in HS% if you filter by good no. of rounds

what Rushi says doesn't matter bro they were supposed to rep India and well yeah rest everyone knows ...

Probably other maps are even worse also Dereyeon hasn't adjusted well to Korea at all his chamber has no value

Both are with RNTX atm Don't break our team plz xd

As much as I would love to see some success for passionate JP fans I think even GE needs this win if we want the confidence to do well this year. Hopefully a good match with #GEWinning.

damn UCAM got run over on Lotus

Izz clutch which happened in 2g vs KRU was top 1

If he can get Visa yes

Bcz I have seen him play from my own eyes both in PH VCL last year nd GE showmatches and not even once he looked better than Udotan to me. I have seen UDotan play both during Ascension nd showmatches. Patrick is a lot like Dambi he is good due to his novelty nd not due to his aim or util.

It's the same thing as in India, imports are brought in bcz the domestic players aren't that level yet.
And why all those imports are insane?? Bcz when you go out of your way to pay more money nd get someone from out of your country to play you will do lengthy tryouts and only bring the absolute best.
Even if people like Something,Udotan,Kr1stal,Autumn etc played in their home country they will still be insane nd dominate the stats charts.
If Secret picks up Azys tmrw he will also put up numbers it's a given .

Patrick is a great player but he isn't all that that most of our fans tell you he is. Infact Udo is better than Patrick on conventional duelists while Patrick is better duelist on others.
Dereyeon is a good player himself though I must admit he is not fragging out well atm

Talon getting completely outplayed on every front till now

Best 3 sherrif shots of all time what even

nope that's Tejo
btw this is Techno - https://www.vlr.gg/player/27775/techno

I think it has happened in some qualifiers already somebody once posted a vlr link to match but I dont think I can find it

Envy2k(duelist). R1sen(Int/IGL), Kibojn(Flex),SmokeA, Yuvi, Lilboi

somebody salty bcz they lost money lol dont bet bro

bro hvoya is so good as coach nd no its not my bias bcz he played in India for RGE. I hv seen him call 3 timeouts in past 2 maps yesterday haven nd today lotus and he literally called 3 plays nd won XLG all important rounds.
at 12-7 on Haven yesterday he took a timeout nd called that bouncing dart garage push on C . Then in Opponent's timeout he called Rarga pushing C window with B exit smoked and Omen ulting defender spawn and crunching them in spawn with Rarga's stun.
and today he called the timeout at 11-10 called the push on C mound aggro and won them that and XLG went on to take map

The best VCT league is back again nd we finally get to see FUT who in my opinion has potential to be one of the best team in this meta

I mean Leo Faria has already said twice that if he could go back now nd do it all over again he would atleast create a semi-open system and not a closed franchise Tier 1. So he sees the problem but he can't now change it today itself bcz they hv signed the contract for a specific period of time. All we can do is wait nd see if he keeps his word nd does something when current franchising contracts run out.

Except the fact that it's actually Loud who has pulled the highest viewership with both their matches being top 2 while Sen vs 100T is the game which saw sharpest decline in viewership losing out to even Loud vs EG .

by same thing numbers Japan's Tier 2 has more viewers than many T1 matches and every T2 in world which unfortunately isnt true for others . The biggest viewerbase of even VCT pacific is Japan their streamers are biggest faces in all of Pacific and sponsors just want numbers

I mean waking up and creating an artificial barrier just by words in between teams who previously competed against each other is definitely an artificial creation of 2 tier of competition. It wasn't like some teams weren't good enough to compete nd got relegated to Tier 2 Riot afterall chose orgs nd not teams as partners and a FA team isnt allowed to Ascend even today

the point you make may work for NA which has 7 rep in Franchising brother but how would you make this system work In SEA where everyone except PRX is fielding an academy roster but its just 1 team in Indian VCL which won't carry viewership and on the opposite end it means half of the slots of SEA league are directly given to academy teams while so many countries miss out even on having a single representation which would completely kill valorant market in their country.

I would also like to counter a very common point which is always thrown around both in reddit nd here that pre-franchising so many orgs invested only in the hope of getting into franchise and they left naturally when they didn't make it. This take implies that no org would hv entered Valorant if Riot had not promised them franchising. I have a very simple retort to this and I would love to debate but do you all seriously believe that 30+ org that invested in NA seriously believed in their head that they have chance of being 1 of the 6 NA team that would be chosen. Orgs like Xset nd Ghost gaming had zero chance of making it over bigger , older ,richer and more clouted orgs in NA yet they created successful teams and Xset went international . Do you guys seriously think that 15 orgs investing in a country like India believed that they would be that 1 chosen one who will go to franchise. Heck orgs like RGE, TR ,Engima didnt even had a structure that would let them reach anywhere close to franchising and similarly i can give countless examples from multiple countries but point is same not everyone was in it for Franchising as people like to claim. Franchising was a competition between some 100 odd orgs organisation for 40 spots while Valorant had over 300 active orgs thriving pre-franchise bcz the ultimate dream of making champions and getting that bundle money changed fates of many org. PRX and Sentinels are what they are today simple due to success in Valorant. And if nothing else Valorant gave everyone enough viewership that they can fetch sponsors nd support their teams which unfortunately isnt possible anymore for Tier 2 teams. I mean you think if I am owner of a company I dont hv any reason to sponsor a team playing in a league with 500 avg viewer. Either i invest in league with 150k avg viewer or I simply dont unless I am a betting company which has throwaway money which also will only be allowed to VCT teams btw

Basically I am Indian and I do watch bit of football, Bayer Leverkusen is my fav team and they play in biggest competitions so I support them during that but at the same time no Indian team plays in champions league or anything but since I have local league where let's say team from my state FC GOA plays so I also support them and watch their matches bcz there's no overlap between 2 teams its a natural connection.
But in Valorant Global Esports represents India in VCT which is biggest league and every other Tier 2 team in India also represents India and thus have no local connection to anyone rather a clear overlap with GE so naturally Indian fanbase nd streamers support GE. I somehow hv support for RNTX core bcz I am here pre-franchising and when it all mattered I chose Enigma gaming and others chose GE , VLT ,T69 , GDL and so on but that won't happen with any new viewer anymore they will naturally choose GE

Second point Riot is definitely responsible and majorly responsible for what's happening to T2. In pre-franchising era a local league had lot more value attached to the matches than what it has today. Since Riot didn't put all their money in sustaining an artificial Tier 1 they actually promoted local leagues which mean more eyeballs. Furthermore with plethora of orgs present fans were willing to divide nd choose amongst their own country teams cheering with a hope that their fav team will make it to regional qualifiers nd represent the country. The classical GE vs VLT which saw insane hype creation and breach of over 70k peak viewership for a local match was result of this . It's a big delusion that people only watch VCT bcz they want to be entertained by highest quality valorant and they won't watch Tier 2 a low quality game as a result. 99% of watchers are much worse than any pro player in game nd they have no understanding of what even is high quality valorant. They watch whatever is sold to them . If this wasn't the case we would not frequently have seen pros like Boaster watching VLT vs GE when India played one of the lowest level of valorant pre-franchising. But Riot giving them official relegation to regional valorant outside 12 hand-picked teams and zero promotion means they are not worth watching for majority playerbase.
Add it to the fact that pre-franchising every official match mattered just like it does even now for VCT teams. But in this system for Tier 2 Split 1 has no value, Split 3 has no value the only matches that matter are split 2 which also send you to Ascension a much lower quality event than Masters or Champions which means it's almost immpossible for a casual viewer to support only their own Tier 2 team or even watch their Split 1 nd 3 matches as they would rather watch a VCT match that matters.
At bare minimum Riot could have added Tier 2 matches to in-game esports tab which would give it good reach atleast but they are incapable of doing even that much for reasons best known to them.

The problem is deeper than what most people understand. Valorant is a truly global game which touched countries which have never before been in PC esports. Riot artificially tried to create 2 Tiers in a game where there's absolutely no scope for it unlike traditional sports. Traditional sports are far-reaching with most teams representing local cities where everybody has a special connect to their own city nd turn up to stadiums to watch their locals play while also having an absolute favorite like Barca nd Madrid in football.
Meanwhile in Valorant teams generally represent whole country and when your country has a team playing in VCT they take up the role of both local and international fav suffocating other teams. Any Tier 2 team having a fanbase is either due to a player/coach/creator who is well known or due to the fact that they represent a country not represented in VCT like Vietnam nd Mongolia.
TLDR there's no way to build any fanbase in Tier 2 valorant which I will touch upon in one more way .

Guys chill out EMEA having more viewership doesn't mean they have taken over Americas. Let me put this way KC vs VIT and Apeks vs M8 both hv already broken past the viewership number of last year EMEA kickoff finals. The highest viewed EMEA kickoff match of all time is last year FNC vs KC in semi-finals peaking at 412K viewers a record which I am very sure would be broken in semis or finals this year especially if French team continues their dominance. So yess EMEA is growing significantly most matches this year have more views than any matches of last year Kickoff.
Meanwhile Americas at this stage is avg 100k less than what they were last year which is definitely bit worrrying

without mincing my words yess it is low this year for some reason. SEN vs 100T is generally no.1 match nd peaks above 500k everytime yet this time not even 300k was hit. Loud is the only team which has retained its fans as of now nd they are topping the viewership chart. Tarik is struggling to cross 60k when he had 100k+ last year. but on the other hand EMEA has had significant increase in viewership