And they are relegated every 2 years irrespective of performance while the partnered teams have a free swing at things without a care in the world.
Essentially making tier 2 a shot at ascending for 2 years for a handful of teams and not worth investing into which is exactly what you are seeing all around the world with tier 2 orgs dropping out like flies.

You cannot have a fair system in place if 'partnered teams' have nothing to lose at the end of every season. No relegation for franchised teams irrespective of performance is a broken system.

I know comparison with traditional sports is not the best stance to take but to bypass that particular view, having the partnered teams locked in for a certain number of years after which they will be eligible for relegation based on performance guarantees the safeguarding of both financial means for the VCT and also ensures that teams aren't just benefitting because of their reputation and financial stature with 0 pressure to perform.

Ascension teams having a 2 year period in the franchised league is broken because of the aforementioned reason. What if they outperform the partnered teams in these 2 years but are forced to get relegated? What part of that seems fair?

Right now the system doesn't prioritize meritocracy.

Their only hope is to win against Bonkers and hope that Dplus and Bonkers lose their remaining matches.
Another condition iOGwould need to hope for is that Bonkers end up with a better differential than Dplus but somehow bad enough to be worse than OG.
1-3 for all 3 of them and OG then having a better h2h/round differential than Bonkers.

Interesting matchup! Would really like to see the Revenant of old come back to life. If it does happen then RNT will win 2-1.

Everything about this screams 'lack of foresight'
As soon as the first issue occurs, they go back to their Indian players comfort zone and try to apply hotfix after hotfix. When having a new team with foreign imports, it is essential to let the team synergy build and not go back to what you are used to doing. Fragments the kind of progress you've been making.

Bringing in international players as mentioned also means that you need to prioritize learning from so called players and not instead give preference to the language/psychological comfort of your Indian players. These are precursors to having an International team and these issues can pop up whenever you undergo said process.

Also need to mention that they said that all team decisions were made in unison with all team members which is a ridiculous position to take. There always needs to be a captain to steer the ship and not everyone coming up with directions in times of a 'storm'. A clear lack of leadership and foresight lead to this mess.

At this point in time, exponentially better. Better comms, synergy and sticking to a set roster! On the other hand velocity bought in ec1s to IGL but they've gone back to their previous IGL in Amaterasu with comms all over the place too. VLT would really need to up their game in a very short period of time to stand any chance against OG.

Make or break for Velocity. It will also show how much they’ve really fallen from grace or if they can keep up with just one import.

Orangutan will most likely be going into this match with playoffs almost secured while VLT will be playing their first match. VLT will be under pressure and what better way to start off than beating arguably the strongest team in the entire tournament.

While its not my right to say whether GE should or shouldn't play their indian players, one thing's for sure is that the ORG right now is representing themselves and only themselves. In essence an ORG looking after their own interests isn't specifically wrong but then milking their indian fanbase into supporting GE as an Indian team is just terrible to say the least.
The GE roster right now only brings the ORG dividends and gives nothing to the South Asian/ Indian valorant scene. Surely the slot was handed over to nurture the untapped talent in the Indian region.

Agreed. Still a lot of scope for improvement. The English stream was delayed by a fair bit in comparison to the Hindi one. A few tweaks here and there with more of the reactions added in would do wonders too.

Banger match up. This will also be a good match to gauge the viewership metrics of this league considering how badly promoted it was. Looking forward to decent numbers since it is VLT playing with a brand new import based lineup.

Decent viewership regardless. Should be exponentially higher for VLT's matches. I do agree with the part that Nodwin has done a bad job in promoting this league.
They should definitely allow watch parties for Split 2 to increase viewership numbers and improve overall engagement.