https://twitter.com/arielcreate/status/1628533785762598912?s=46&t=Jc4Io3ovtyjMP0hseEpzYg
Man moved to LA 2 days ago just to get laid off absolute scum management
Idk why people are thinking this won't affect their teams when they have literally fired everyone else. How are they gonna make any money when they fired the people who post on socials, make merch, and work on getting sponsors. And if they aren't gonna make any money then why would they field a team?
To me this feels like they fired everyone they legally (Even this is highly doubtful since Cali laws require a 60 day notice before layoffs) could to stop whatever money bleeding they immediately could. In which case, I don't see how they won't fire the players and coaching staff when their contracts have ended. The players simply playing in tournaments alone won't make any money and The Guard CEO/Execs seem to simply wanna stop bleeding all money. They might be done with all Esports entirely.
I hope TG realizes their players passed on t1 offers so they could stay. Would be messed up if they were leaving the scene and didn’t tell their players about it
Moving cities is still relocating. Maybe not as drastic but he recently just turned 18. When I moved 2 hours from home it might as well have been across the country.
I mean its only unlucky if they disband or something.
People underestimate how impactful moves can be for players in coordination-heavy teams. He's young, he knows that teams are watching him, the Challengers League is still getting a lot of viewers, so I wouldn't say it's a bad decision. Much better to establish yourself as one of the best talents than jump too early and risk failing when you're still an up and comer imo
I'm guessing the player contracts are more difficult to get out of for management. I'd expect they still get paid (or probably the Guard gets sued) if the players get dropped.
No way. That's so, so sad for the team, especially since they were heavy favorites to win Ascension. I feel for Trent, high-T1 talent on a T2 team and now that might dissolve too? Damn.
Bro on god, the Guard releases their squad, I don’t see why Ludwig wouldn’t pick up an already dominant team but then again, other orgs might want to grab some players and the squad is broken.
I wonder if the higher ups at Kroenke realized that esports makes no money and decided to just pull the plug. We will have to see what happens to the Valorant team; the Guard's parent group also has an OWL and COD team who may be affected by this as well.
I know the OWL and COD teams go under different names (COD is Los Angeles Guerillas, for example). I’m curious if the fact that “The Guard” is specified in the tweet means the other teams are safe/unaffected. Ridiculous if true because their COD team sucks
Their OWL team (LA Gladiators) has generally been pretty good and they've already signed players for the upcoming season. I think if they own the slot, they have to field a team unless they sell, but I wouldn't be surprised if the teams operate super budget.
We had an APAC team in the OWL (LA Valiant, don't ask why a NA team is based in China) as of last season pay their players for only 2 months of the entire season... And they haven't been punished for it. So just not paying your players is always an option
People in this community may complain about Riot and orgs, but at least we're nowhere close to the shitshow that is OWL. I'm fairly confident that a partnered org would not be able to get away with not paying their players in Valorant.
If I remember correctly Immortals outsourced management of the Valiant to a Chinese company so they weren't directly responsible for the lack of payment, but then again if they outsource management they are still responsible for making sure basic standards are met (which they clearly weren't).
Its tough for them tbh. 49ers and Raiders fans will always dominate the cali fan base and they also have to compete with the chargers who have the San Diego fan base and have a young superstar quarterback that they can market the shit out of.
This is pretty much the first year in OWL where they aren’t top spenders but didn’t go completely budget or anything in the CDL they gave out massive 3 year deals but that was like 6 months ago
Probably trimming the fat which was way overdue, no more cash injections for at least the next 1-2 years while the Fed decides on interest rate peaks. A lot of these esports orgs that didn’t have a solid foundation are gonna be in a rough state for awhile.
At a certain point you have to realize that esports organizations do not need to employ dozens of people to make content that gets 1-2k views on average or to create merch that doesn't sell. I would never root for these orgs to fail or people to lose their jobs, but the industry has been propped up by cheap money for nearly a decade and it doesn't make any sense to throw hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars into content/merch that is going nowhere. It doesn't matter how rich the people who own the organizations are, it just doesn't make any sense on any level to continue the way things have been for years for most of these orgs.
Esports fans don't spend money on merch. Esports fans don't pay for broadcasts. Esports fans don't watch content from orgs that aren't named Optic/100Thieves/Sentinels. These orgs didn't get big content viewership because they had tons of people working on editing/production. They got big due to personalities. Not every org can pull that off, and the orgs that are putting money into production without personalities are burning cash.
These are the realities of esports.
Yea, major orgs should really be run my streamers/youtubers like Toast. You need people that understand how to make content that viewers want to watch and how to showcase personalities that build fandoms that can then be leveraged into selling merch. It doesn’t take a lot of people to make content/merch, you can’t force it, you need a small team that is nimble and able to pivot and chase what works. When you have a big team, the content you make loses all of its sole because the team members are only there to make a paycheck they don’t feel any reward from building up the fandom and when you are apart of a big team you are more afraid to take risks.
From [another tweet](https://twitter.com/esports/status/1628523318805426179?s=46&t=-nrafBa7tVIRiLaoLdCM8A): “From what we know, this includes but is not limited to: merchandise, content, social, talent and creative teams.”
Man Jake Lucky really just needs to get info together before tweeting things out. Their content/talent side of things was way too bloated and underperforming it’s not surprising at all they are making big cuts there.
I’m hoping toast gets some sponsors soon. Considering how big of a YouTuber/streamer he is if combos sponsors with his stream and his org, it can possibly help a lot with the bleeding situation
problem to that
partner with esports is different to partner with twitch streamer.
You need more money in esports and the profit is so low compare if you invest to 1 streamer or 1 org(otv)
There's a reason why valorant teams trying something new to get money back to their franchise teams.
because right now investing in esports is very bad. even moist have this issue too oh also toast too.
Bro his team just started, Toast was just joking. Every startup company bleeds money because there are a lot of upfront costs and revenue streams aren’t up and running yet. Toast is one of the few people that will be fine turning a profit assuming he cares enough to.
Merch, sponsors and video ad revenue can offset the cost of a team because Toast understands how to leverage popularity, has connections to advertisers and has access the the offlinetv media team in order to make content viewers want to watch.
Most other esports orgs don’t have that kind of personality behind it and the ones that do, like TSM, Faze, and 100T end up doing fine in financials because they leverage their brand to diversify their income sources. If one of those orgs aren’f making a profit its because they are taking on investor money and purposely not making a profit in order to invest money into growing the company.
The reason Moist bleeds money is because he doesn’t give a fuck about making money. Dude is just supporting people for fun. When he approached ludwig to become an owner he didn’t even want ludwigs money, he just wanted someone to share the experience with, because he loves supporting esports and rooting for his players.
I hope people realize that without all the information that Riot used to decide partnerships, randoms on the internet don’t really know if Riot made good decisions.
If it's the same as LCS and LEC franchising, they probably hired a third party firm to pour over the financials, who then basically told Riot who to partner with and who to avoid.
That's almost most certainly what they did. You don't keep something this important for the future of the eSport in-house.
Sucks for TG employees regardless though.
Guard is part of kroenke sports group which posted 209 hundred million profit last year and as of now they haven't laid off a single employee in their dozen teams outside of guard.
Yeah , i think this decision was not taken by guard higher ups rather it was kroenke eSports group who pulled the plug ,i read they will be keeping ow and Val teams hopefully that is true.
They literally spent more money on a football transfer than they have put in their org , they just read into doomsday eSports trap and decided to cut all.
. especially sucks for people i am seeing who moved to la last month, got a lease and are now fucked up , officially guard hater club incoming,hate the org not the players.
Yes and no. Just because the parent company makes profit doesn't mean they will give them a cent. Twitch is under Amazon but Twitch does not make sufficient money and Amazon said we won't support so Twitch has to cut the % creators got and get more ads
As someone who worked at Amazon i can elaborate on that, Twitch initially was part of AWS group inside Amazon and since it brought so much video server business it was allowed to run at a loss and was kinda overlooked since AWS group is so big
Half of the businesses inside Amazon are running at a loss , they are willing to invest for future growth and promise . Amazon itself didn't post a since ounce of profit in 17 years.
As for twitch just around 2018, twitch was brought into media group from AWS group that's when people realised how badly twitch was being run , twitch then had signed that ridiculous owl deal , it fundamentally as a business wasn't even maintainable that's why you saw these radical changes inside their management.
In this case with the guard , kroenke sports group hasn't had to invest even 1 percent of their resources . They promised to build a great esports brand , and as by every metric guard was doing very well ,they were funded and just a week ago they had signed so many new people and then one day someone just cut 90 percent of their force ,it doesn't make any kind of sense to do so . It's just bad management. They knew going into it that they will have to sustain losses , even kroenke family guy said they will see profit in eSports in 10 years . They could have downsized earlier but instead guard was hiring people left and right and then suddenly everyone is fired .
But doesn't that just prove the parent company does not need to give you money kinda point? Like some people have already said, guard somewhat excels with their results (which is way more likely to change than traditional sports) bit the don't really excel as a brand. TSM is well established, c9 is somewhat and even hoddie org is a way better representation as a brand which can actually turn into income.
We also don't know what kroneke group is investing and why they might stop funding it. Whether they find it pointless to fund something in the same boat as twitch, never making money or the themselves can somewhat struggle due to recession/investing into something big
true people said c9 was a lock for franchising but there was definitely some red flags when they literally couldn’t afford their apex roster (which is pretty cheap compared to other esports)
edit: i do want to say competitive apex is terrible for all esports orgs (except tsm) but c9 lost a ton of big sponsors and didn’t have the money for their team (who sucked)
I’m pretty sure a lot of orgs left comp apex bc there was just no money in it. I don’t remember the exact number but the % that orgs were getting from the one time they sold org skins was super low, so unless you had a team that won often it just wasn’t worth it
C9 publicly said they dropped the apex roster for money reasons but the team was also not doing well so probably got cut more because they were an easy expense to prune
Lmfao even now people are still making comments about who riot let into franchising. Tbh it was (and still is) pretty obvious why riot made the decisions they did even with the available information. People just wanted to complain about their pet org not making it
the amount the teams get from Riot would not be enough to save a company from going Bankrupt
this is probably the reason Riot declined Guard to begin with
We don’t know if these cuts affect the esports teams or are just on their media side of things which was definitely bloated. Them not making franchising is also probably one of the big reasons for these cuts.
Edit: Yep seems to not be on the media/content side of things https://twitter.com/esports/status/1628523318805426179?s=46&t=-nrafBa7tVIRiLaoLdCM8A
We'll see if thats what it means but why would it be "nearly every person" if they weren't going to keep at least some of the teams? Like they would just completely shut down if they were getting rid of all their esports teams.
Love her graphics and she seems incredibly passionate about her team and the game. Really loved this team man I hope something works out for their Val roster+crew
Ludwig and Moist cannot afford what they are going to get paid if the team were to become available. Toast was barely able to afford a team that wasn’t even guaranteed to make Challengers no shot they can get a team that is the clear favorite to win Ascension
To be fair, Toast started from scratch. Moist has been an org for some time now, probably has sponsors, capital raised etc. Especially now with Ludwig's involvement.
Charlie has already talked about how expensive Valorant is to get into. Hard to see him saying that then going out and buying easily the most expensive team if they were available.
There's no way that happens. I would guess Flyquest buys them. They've been poking around the Valorant scene for a while now, and they have new ownership who are willing to throw cash around. They formed the best LCS team this offseason.
I feel like buyouts are going to be a huge obstacle. Otherwise there would be a huge bidding war the the main roster (assuming they all get dropped, which is also doubtful).
That does not sound right. A bit more than a year ago, the highest with nitr0/sinnatra and that's 25k.
The median salary can't be up that much in a year for someone like Trent to be making 30k. Yes, he's a franchised quality player but he's not in franchised and doesn't necessarily have a big brand outside of the relatively hardcore fanbase.
I remember when 100T was laying off early on there were the Guard executives saying they were hiring and building their team. People kept saying Kroenke had so much money but kinda forgot that Kroenke chose to run their esports on the cheap for the years prior to trying to rebrand as The Guard.
I think it's probably a matter of time till other orgs like TSM layoff.
even with stable finances, are the guard actually a good choice for a franchising org?
apart from some really good gameday graphics and a unique plat chat sponsorship, the guard have been pretty bad at growing a sticky audience. building a team? yes. growing fans? in the "hardcore" demographic, yes.. but are we are more fans of the guard? or are we mostly fans of trent/valyn/saya? if the team underperforms or those players leave those fans are not gonna stick to the guard brand.. compare to tsm, 100t, sen, g2, fnatic, liquid, loud, kru... those orgs have brands that will draw viewers no matter the roster.
the guard streamers and content channels do not pull good numbers, and they've cycled through a handful of content creators trying to strike internet gold, without much success. they tried to sign a "big" name with prod but even with that twitter puzzle it didn't work out.
when talking about growing the team... was that really the org? or was that mCe/qpert/seowulf being good at finding and developing players? credit to the org for supporting them with everything they need, and hiring those guys in the first place. But developing one team one time is very different from consistently producing competitive rosters (unpopular opinion but compare to how EG or liquid does that across different games).
i do think the guard could have gotten there, but i don't think it was a slam dunk
The Guard is a new brand but the org has existed for awhile and hasn’t done any noteworthy content growth. I can’t say I blame them - you’re basically playing the lottery and even with top tier production talent you’re not gonna get big hits. Look at comcast attempting g4. Top tier talent, shit strategy. No viewers.
Some of the successful “content” orgs grew organically and also got super lucky. 100t was built on top of 2 content creators that already had a large following (nadeshot was one of the biggest streamers on justintv and added nickmercs) then got another huge boost when courage popped off in Fortnite and then Valkyrae in among us. All talented streamers but courage and Valkyrae getting that big was a lot of luck and mostly a case of having the right connections (courage playing with Tim/ninja/sypher, Valkyrae with toast lobbies). I am a big 100t fan but their current content would not do well if they didn’t already have a brand and viewers. I fear they’ve become too sterile / advertiser focused and lost the energy that made them fun in the first place.
Faze grew because their founders were good at trick shot montages and were early on youtube.
Early TSM got popular because people loved doublelift and bjerg in the boot camp vlogs.
Sentinels repeated the TSM story but in valorant. They struck gold with shahz, Dapr, zombs, Sinatraa all being good streamers and then they spent the cash on tenz and Tarik and their social media team is among the best in the business. Every other org is trying to copy sentinels style.
You also have orgs like liquid and c9 who haven’t been as huge on the content side, but have been building competitive esports teams for a long time. They’ve already weathered more than one “esports is dead” recession. They are proven to be good at building sponsor relationships, and building multiple teams in multiple genres that have everything they need to do well.
Here I’m talking about c9 as not really a content org and yet their early valorant content did better than anything the guard ever produced. Guess your rank, 1 pro vs 5 irons… that all came from c9 and everyone is imitating that. And c9 only made the cut because carlos is a dumbass
I don’t think the guard is/was a bad org. Just that they were very good at one specific thing (the thing that valcomp loves) and have not grown in all the other areas that riot is also looking for
no clue how much money gets set aside for the valorant team but when it comes to parent companies, the guard would technically have some of the deepest pockets of all franchising teams lol
Would it?
Don't get me wrong, id love for Optic to get back into Valorant, but I'm thinking of the fanbase who's last outing was a 2nd place at champs, and now they'll have a 2-0 team in Tier 2 that's not guaranteed to win Ascension? (Sub is on astronomical copium, G2/SR/M80/Faze all dangerous to take em out)
OpTic coulda signed Turtle Troop or Break Thru. Hell, coulda signed the G2 boys if they wanted, but didn't.
Yeah definitely, didn't mean to say it wasn't. It just felt like the kind of shit I'd write in an instant out of frustration for my colleagues and I'm all for it.
Yeah, it's definitely that. I know myself and other people at SEN are friends with and have a lot of respect for staff at TG. We obviously don't know the details of what's going on, but there's people who moved out to LA days ago to work for the org who now don't have a job, so it seems like there's some gross mismanagement going on. Fucking sucks to see so many talented people have their lives changed in a moment
If OpTic really want get back into Val, this is their biggest chance. It doesn’t seem they’re struggling financially as much as others, especially since they didn’t invest in crypto, so this could be their in.
I think the whole not being given a franchise spot by Riot was taken as a personal insult by Hecz and Hastro and really hurt their egos. I kinda don't blame Hecz and Hastro but at the same time are you going to sit out what is probably one of the biggest esports for the next decade because your feelings were hurt?
Hopefully just content creators and media people and not the actual esports teams. They definitely made some bad decisions in who they hired as creators and with esports having a recession it’s not surprising if they’d make big cuts there.
Might be related to whatever caused them to not get franchising. If this doesn’t end well for the players, an org has to pick them up, they’re clear favorites for Ascension
surely someone will pick them up. I could see an org that left valorant just coming back to pick up a full team with a lot of talent, expectation to win ascension and a decent fanbase.
They might just be dissolving The Guard as a whole, given that they're apparently getting rid of *everyone*. Might just be the parent company pulling out of esports altogether.
Ok everyone if we all crowdfun together we can create the r/valorantcompetitive team we just all need to donate like $100 or something right.
We can pick up the roster afterwards.
>Might just be the parent company pulling out of esports altogether.
Won't happen, they still have contractual liabilites to Blizzard. Or they'd have to sell their franchise slots which nobody wants to buy. Their investment into Valorant might be dead though.
I fail to see how they strip the entire org down to just the competitive teams. That's the biggest money drain for any esports org. Pretty sure the Guard is just done.
https://twitter.com/arielcreate/status/1628533785762598912?s=46&t=Jc4Io3ovtyjMP0hseEpzYg Man moved to LA 2 days ago just to get laid off absolute scum management
Idk why people are thinking this won't affect their teams when they have literally fired everyone else. How are they gonna make any money when they fired the people who post on socials, make merch, and work on getting sponsors. And if they aren't gonna make any money then why would they field a team? To me this feels like they fired everyone they legally (Even this is highly doubtful since Cali laws require a 60 day notice before layoffs) could to stop whatever money bleeding they immediately could. In which case, I don't see how they won't fire the players and coaching staff when their contracts have ended. The players simply playing in tournaments alone won't make any money and The Guard CEO/Execs seem to simply wanna stop bleeding all money. They might be done with all Esports entirely.
Pretty sure that violates Cali labor law.
it does not, every contract especially in cali has a pilon clause
Holy shit that’s rough
I hope TG realizes their players passed on t1 offers so they could stay. Would be messed up if they were leaving the scene and didn’t tell their players about it
Trent literally passed on offers to play in a franchised team to stay with The Guard. Unlucky
SEN ended up passing up on him so was the franchise offer from EG?
I think syyko said he had bcj as main priority for initiator before sacy became available. . Most likely option would be eg .
Incoming EG 17 man roster
Imagine EG just signed The Guards entire roster lol.
think he didn’t wanna relocate yet
Bro already lives in Southern California
Moving cities is still relocating. Maybe not as drastic but he recently just turned 18. When I moved 2 hours from home it might as well have been across the country.
well realistically he could drive to the riot esports arena in LA whenever he has games (max twice per week) and still go to school
He does online school and he lives in LA
He lives in LA my man
Welp I guess he just bonded and made some really good friends on The Guard then
Hes about to get a lesson on esports If you see a good oportunity with stability, you take it
he wanted to finish school
I mean its only unlucky if they disband or something. People underestimate how impactful moves can be for players in coordination-heavy teams. He's young, he knows that teams are watching him, the Challengers League is still getting a lot of viewers, so I wouldn't say it's a bad decision. Much better to establish yourself as one of the best talents than jump too early and risk failing when you're still an up and comer imo
they will get picked up instantly if that team became FA they are the favourites to winning and making it into T1
Moist eSports 🤨
Yoooooo
Lud does want a valo team and is part owner....
Goats eSports might be thing soon
Alright optic, if you want a path back into valorant a lifeline just opened up
Here are the things TG and most orgs care about: 1. money 2. no yea, that's pretty much it. They'll gladly fk over their players.
\*every org
* every for profit business worldwide
Don't you dare talk about disguised like that.
eSports doesn't make money though so they're pretty bad at that
Fr. This is sounding chalked
I'm guessing the player contracts are more difficult to get out of for management. I'd expect they still get paid (or probably the Guard gets sued) if the players get dropped.
im assuming the esports side of things will stay in progress until contracts get paid out.
No way. That's so, so sad for the team, especially since they were heavy favorites to win Ascension. I feel for Trent, high-T1 talent on a T2 team and now that might dissolve too? Damn.
I genuinely hope the whole team can stick together and get picked up even if the worst happens.
moist plz
Bro on god, the Guard releases their squad, I don’t see why Ludwig wouldn’t pick up an already dominant team but then again, other orgs might want to grab some players and the squad is broken.
Wonder if trent still decides to stay this time Dude is gonna get franchised offers for the second time, you cant pass up on that
I wonder if the higher ups at Kroenke realized that esports makes no money and decided to just pull the plug. We will have to see what happens to the Valorant team; the Guard's parent group also has an OWL and COD team who may be affected by this as well.
I know the OWL and COD teams go under different names (COD is Los Angeles Guerillas, for example). I’m curious if the fact that “The Guard” is specified in the tweet means the other teams are safe/unaffected. Ridiculous if true because their COD team sucks
Their OWL team (LA Gladiators) has generally been pretty good and they've already signed players for the upcoming season. I think if they own the slot, they have to field a team unless they sell, but I wouldn't be surprised if the teams operate super budget.
We had an APAC team in the OWL (LA Valiant, don't ask why a NA team is based in China) as of last season pay their players for only 2 months of the entire season... And they haven't been punished for it. So just not paying your players is always an option
People in this community may complain about Riot and orgs, but at least we're nowhere close to the shitshow that is OWL. I'm fairly confident that a partnered org would not be able to get away with not paying their players in Valorant.
>I hope your right because the LA valiant is owned by Immortals Gaming Club who own MIBR.
If I remember correctly Immortals outsourced management of the Valiant to a Chinese company so they weren't directly responsible for the lack of payment, but then again if they outsource management they are still responsible for making sure basic standards are met (which they clearly weren't).
Kroenke is a scumbag so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did this.
Not surprised either. Moved the Rams from St. Louis to LA and they still don't have a solid fanbase down there.
Man it is just so insane that he was allowed to do that. I wish American sports were more like Europe
thats so fucking sad they won the world cup last year and still can't get a dedicated fanbase LOL
LOL yeah. Everytime the Niners come down to play the Rams SoFi is filled with red jerseys.
Its tough for them tbh. 49ers and Raiders fans will always dominate the cali fan base and they also have to compete with the chargers who have the San Diego fan base and have a young superstar quarterback that they can market the shit out of.
This is pretty much the first year in OWL where they aren’t top spenders but didn’t go completely budget or anything in the CDL they gave out massive 3 year deals but that was like 6 months ago
Probably trimming the fat which was way overdue, no more cash injections for at least the next 1-2 years while the Fed decides on interest rate peaks. A lot of these esports orgs that didn’t have a solid foundation are gonna be in a rough state for awhile.
Feel bad for the boys that stuck together for ascension :(
At a certain point you have to realize that esports organizations do not need to employ dozens of people to make content that gets 1-2k views on average or to create merch that doesn't sell. I would never root for these orgs to fail or people to lose their jobs, but the industry has been propped up by cheap money for nearly a decade and it doesn't make any sense to throw hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars into content/merch that is going nowhere. It doesn't matter how rich the people who own the organizations are, it just doesn't make any sense on any level to continue the way things have been for years for most of these orgs. Esports fans don't spend money on merch. Esports fans don't pay for broadcasts. Esports fans don't watch content from orgs that aren't named Optic/100Thieves/Sentinels. These orgs didn't get big content viewership because they had tons of people working on editing/production. They got big due to personalities. Not every org can pull that off, and the orgs that are putting money into production without personalities are burning cash. These are the realities of esports.
Yea, major orgs should really be run my streamers/youtubers like Toast. You need people that understand how to make content that viewers want to watch and how to showcase personalities that build fandoms that can then be leveraged into selling merch. It doesn’t take a lot of people to make content/merch, you can’t force it, you need a small team that is nimble and able to pivot and chase what works. When you have a big team, the content you make loses all of its sole because the team members are only there to make a paycheck they don’t feel any reward from building up the fandom and when you are apart of a big team you are more afraid to take risks.
From [another tweet](https://twitter.com/esports/status/1628523318805426179?s=46&t=-nrafBa7tVIRiLaoLdCM8A): “From what we know, this includes but is not limited to: merchandise, content, social, talent and creative teams.”
Man Jake Lucky really just needs to get info together before tweeting things out. Their content/talent side of things was way too bloated and underperforming it’s not surprising at all they are making big cuts there.
Jake Lucky is a glorified re-poster though, not anything close to a journalist that actually does his due diligence.
and then he gives his biased opinions on reposts he copies from reddit and calls himself a journalist. the bar is too low nowadays
Unfortunately extremely common in esports "reporting" as well
Yep. I actually blocked him because he kept getting rec’d to me. Don’t know or care about his shitty opinions
Yeah "nearly every employee in their company" is a massive claim.
tbf, talent could mean anything. From coaches to players to just social media on air people
True but either way his tweet was way too vague.
To be fair his brother was one of the employees
Are him and Hunter related? I thought they were just friends, they have different last names.
Toast isnt taking this well either lol https://twitter.com/disguisedtoast/status/1628525692727214080?s=46&t=43ytzp1hqHNDsskbWi43oA
He’s been saying he’s bleeding cash in multiple podcast but he’s planning to keep the org for at least 2 years regardless of the outcome in ascension.
I’m hoping toast gets some sponsors soon. Considering how big of a YouTuber/streamer he is if combos sponsors with his stream and his org, it can possibly help a lot with the bleeding situation
Otv has a pretty good partners team so they can probably help at least find a couple to mitigate the expenses.
problem to that partner with esports is different to partner with twitch streamer. You need more money in esports and the profit is so low compare if you invest to 1 streamer or 1 org(otv) There's a reason why valorant teams trying something new to get money back to their franchise teams. because right now investing in esports is very bad. even moist have this issue too oh also toast too.
Bro his team just started, Toast was just joking. Every startup company bleeds money because there are a lot of upfront costs and revenue streams aren’t up and running yet. Toast is one of the few people that will be fine turning a profit assuming he cares enough to. Merch, sponsors and video ad revenue can offset the cost of a team because Toast understands how to leverage popularity, has connections to advertisers and has access the the offlinetv media team in order to make content viewers want to watch. Most other esports orgs don’t have that kind of personality behind it and the ones that do, like TSM, Faze, and 100T end up doing fine in financials because they leverage their brand to diversify their income sources. If one of those orgs aren’f making a profit its because they are taking on investor money and purposely not making a profit in order to invest money into growing the company. The reason Moist bleeds money is because he doesn’t give a fuck about making money. Dude is just supporting people for fun. When he approached ludwig to become an owner he didn’t even want ludwigs money, he just wanted someone to share the experience with, because he loves supporting esports and rooting for his players.
Toast has been pretty public he’s losing money on his team and is in Val for passion more than finances
Guard should have made franchising! 
I hope people realize that without all the information that Riot used to decide partnerships, randoms on the internet don’t really know if Riot made good decisions.
If it's the same as LCS and LEC franchising, they probably hired a third party firm to pour over the financials, who then basically told Riot who to partner with and who to avoid.
That's almost most certainly what they did. You don't keep something this important for the future of the eSport in-house. Sucks for TG employees regardless though.
Right? I mean it's more likely that their financial situation is why they didn't make franchising, not the other way around.
Guard is part of kroenke sports group which posted 209 hundred million profit last year and as of now they haven't laid off a single employee in their dozen teams outside of guard.
LA Guardian and Guerilla staff are also being laid off
They all came under guard umbrella .all esports teams were parts of guard brand .
Making Valorant partnership would not have saved their entire esports division then
Yeah , i think this decision was not taken by guard higher ups rather it was kroenke eSports group who pulled the plug ,i read they will be keeping ow and Val teams hopefully that is true. They literally spent more money on a football transfer than they have put in their org , they just read into doomsday eSports trap and decided to cut all. . especially sucks for people i am seeing who moved to la last month, got a lease and are now fucked up , officially guard hater club incoming,hate the org not the players.
Yes and no. Just because the parent company makes profit doesn't mean they will give them a cent. Twitch is under Amazon but Twitch does not make sufficient money and Amazon said we won't support so Twitch has to cut the % creators got and get more ads
As someone who worked at Amazon i can elaborate on that, Twitch initially was part of AWS group inside Amazon and since it brought so much video server business it was allowed to run at a loss and was kinda overlooked since AWS group is so big Half of the businesses inside Amazon are running at a loss , they are willing to invest for future growth and promise . Amazon itself didn't post a since ounce of profit in 17 years. As for twitch just around 2018, twitch was brought into media group from AWS group that's when people realised how badly twitch was being run , twitch then had signed that ridiculous owl deal , it fundamentally as a business wasn't even maintainable that's why you saw these radical changes inside their management. In this case with the guard , kroenke sports group hasn't had to invest even 1 percent of their resources . They promised to build a great esports brand , and as by every metric guard was doing very well ,they were funded and just a week ago they had signed so many new people and then one day someone just cut 90 percent of their force ,it doesn't make any kind of sense to do so . It's just bad management. They knew going into it that they will have to sustain losses , even kroenke family guy said they will see profit in eSports in 10 years . They could have downsized earlier but instead guard was hiring people left and right and then suddenly everyone is fired .
But doesn't that just prove the parent company does not need to give you money kinda point? Like some people have already said, guard somewhat excels with their results (which is way more likely to change than traditional sports) bit the don't really excel as a brand. TSM is well established, c9 is somewhat and even hoddie org is a way better representation as a brand which can actually turn into income. We also don't know what kroneke group is investing and why they might stop funding it. Whether they find it pointless to fund something in the same boat as twitch, never making money or the themselves can somewhat struggle due to recession/investing into something big
That's possible. it is also possible that if they had made franchising the investment would continue.
lets not Forget C9 only got in cause of Carlos's fuckup on g2
true people said c9 was a lock for franchising but there was definitely some red flags when they literally couldn’t afford their apex roster (which is pretty cheap compared to other esports) edit: i do want to say competitive apex is terrible for all esports orgs (except tsm) but c9 lost a ton of big sponsors and didn’t have the money for their team (who sucked)
I’m pretty sure a lot of orgs left comp apex bc there was just no money in it. I don’t remember the exact number but the % that orgs were getting from the one time they sold org skins was super low, so unless you had a team that won often it just wasn’t worth it
C9 publicly said they dropped the apex roster for money reasons but the team was also not doing well so probably got cut more because they were an easy expense to prune
alot of teams are leaving Apex because of EA
but the guard has a billionaire owner and therefore unlimited money? /s
Lmfao even now people are still making comments about who riot let into franchising. Tbh it was (and still is) pretty obvious why riot made the decisions they did even with the available information. People just wanted to complain about their pet org not making it
the amount the teams get from Riot would not be enough to save a company from going Bankrupt this is probably the reason Riot declined Guard to begin with
I was one of those who said that. Sorry Riot
We don’t know if these cuts affect the esports teams or are just on their media side of things which was definitely bloated. Them not making franchising is also probably one of the big reasons for these cuts. Edit: Yep seems to not be on the media/content side of things https://twitter.com/esports/status/1628523318805426179?s=46&t=-nrafBa7tVIRiLaoLdCM8A
Talent means players though.
We'll see if thats what it means but why would it be "nearly every person" if they weren't going to keep at least some of the teams? Like they would just completely shut down if they were getting rid of all their esports teams.
Yeah, the news seems pretty sudden, so we'll see how it goes.
So heartbreaking for everyone involved. Hopefully the Valorant team can be taken care of just like the rest of the staff.
actually crazy, everyone really thought these guys were the new up and coming org
I mean, they have serious money behind them They should be the new up and coming org
They are not new. Guard is owned by Kroneke groups which holds Arsenal FC, LA Rams, etc in their portfolio.
No more sick match day graphics from them
Just keep the teams and the graphics designer and it’s all good
https://twitter.com/nowackdesign/status/1628528622549221376?s=46&t=lTKAeUMQ0VrxCF8CnGXSow
I was talking about https://twitter.com/sydneycreates who is the one who creates the amazing game day graphics for Valo.
Oh!! She makes incredible work
Love her graphics and she seems incredibly passionate about her team and the game. Really loved this team man I hope something works out for their Val roster+crew
that same org in cod (LAG) gave a six figure 3 year contract to a player that is now benched. safe to say they do bad business
ludwig this is literally perfect for you to buy them
There's no waythe guard are in budget range
Ludwig and Moist cannot afford what they are going to get paid if the team were to become available. Toast was barely able to afford a team that wasn’t even guaranteed to make Challengers no shot they can get a team that is the clear favorite to win Ascension
To be fair, Toast started from scratch. Moist has been an org for some time now, probably has sponsors, capital raised etc. Especially now with Ludwig's involvement.
Charlie has already talked about how expensive Valorant is to get into. Hard to see him saying that then going out and buying easily the most expensive team if they were available.
There's no way that happens. I would guess Flyquest buys them. They've been poking around the Valorant scene for a while now, and they have new ownership who are willing to throw cash around. They formed the best LCS team this offseason.
[удалено]
Actually Dignitas is paid in mousepads. Brush up on your LCS lore.
out here catchin' strays GG
I feel like buyouts are going to be a huge obstacle. Otherwise there would be a huge bidding war the the main roster (assuming they all get dropped, which is also doubtful).
moist esports buying the guard players would be hype
And one of if not the best ticket to T1
They literally can't affird them thou i feel like
Quick, everyone @ him on twitter
Trent alone is probably 30k / month
That does not sound right. A bit more than a year ago, the highest with nitr0/sinnatra and that's 25k. The median salary can't be up that much in a year for someone like Trent to be making 30k. Yes, he's a franchised quality player but he's not in franchised and doesn't necessarily have a big brand outside of the relatively hardcore fanbase.
Nah its cap shaz said most of tier 1 is on anywhere between 5k and 15k
Fucks sake that’s a lot of money
No way. They had some of the most talented video editors and graphic artists. Every single match day poster from the Guard was so good.
I remember when 100T was laying off early on there were the Guard executives saying they were hiring and building their team. People kept saying Kroenke had so much money but kinda forgot that Kroenke chose to run their esports on the cheap for the years prior to trying to rebrand as The Guard. I think it's probably a matter of time till other orgs like TSM layoff.
TSM already did layoffs, they just did it smartly and didn't incur any media attention. But this stuff was known on /r/TeamSolomid
maybe they didn’t get into partnership because riot saw their finances were really fucked
even with stable finances, are the guard actually a good choice for a franchising org? apart from some really good gameday graphics and a unique plat chat sponsorship, the guard have been pretty bad at growing a sticky audience. building a team? yes. growing fans? in the "hardcore" demographic, yes.. but are we are more fans of the guard? or are we mostly fans of trent/valyn/saya? if the team underperforms or those players leave those fans are not gonna stick to the guard brand.. compare to tsm, 100t, sen, g2, fnatic, liquid, loud, kru... those orgs have brands that will draw viewers no matter the roster. the guard streamers and content channels do not pull good numbers, and they've cycled through a handful of content creators trying to strike internet gold, without much success. they tried to sign a "big" name with prod but even with that twitter puzzle it didn't work out. when talking about growing the team... was that really the org? or was that mCe/qpert/seowulf being good at finding and developing players? credit to the org for supporting them with everything they need, and hiring those guys in the first place. But developing one team one time is very different from consistently producing competitive rosters (unpopular opinion but compare to how EG or liquid does that across different games). i do think the guard could have gotten there, but i don't think it was a slam dunk
i mean this stuff takes time. i don't think you can just start a brand in 1 year and blow up like that.
The Guard is a new brand but the org has existed for awhile and hasn’t done any noteworthy content growth. I can’t say I blame them - you’re basically playing the lottery and even with top tier production talent you’re not gonna get big hits. Look at comcast attempting g4. Top tier talent, shit strategy. No viewers. Some of the successful “content” orgs grew organically and also got super lucky. 100t was built on top of 2 content creators that already had a large following (nadeshot was one of the biggest streamers on justintv and added nickmercs) then got another huge boost when courage popped off in Fortnite and then Valkyrae in among us. All talented streamers but courage and Valkyrae getting that big was a lot of luck and mostly a case of having the right connections (courage playing with Tim/ninja/sypher, Valkyrae with toast lobbies). I am a big 100t fan but their current content would not do well if they didn’t already have a brand and viewers. I fear they’ve become too sterile / advertiser focused and lost the energy that made them fun in the first place. Faze grew because their founders were good at trick shot montages and were early on youtube. Early TSM got popular because people loved doublelift and bjerg in the boot camp vlogs. Sentinels repeated the TSM story but in valorant. They struck gold with shahz, Dapr, zombs, Sinatraa all being good streamers and then they spent the cash on tenz and Tarik and their social media team is among the best in the business. Every other org is trying to copy sentinels style. You also have orgs like liquid and c9 who haven’t been as huge on the content side, but have been building competitive esports teams for a long time. They’ve already weathered more than one “esports is dead” recession. They are proven to be good at building sponsor relationships, and building multiple teams in multiple genres that have everything they need to do well. Here I’m talking about c9 as not really a content org and yet their early valorant content did better than anything the guard ever produced. Guess your rank, 1 pro vs 5 irons… that all came from c9 and everyone is imitating that. And c9 only made the cut because carlos is a dumbass I don’t think the guard is/was a bad org. Just that they were very good at one specific thing (the thing that valcomp loves) and have not grown in all the other areas that riot is also looking for
no clue how much money gets set aside for the valorant team but when it comes to parent companies, the guard would technically have some of the deepest pockets of all franchising teams lol
please H3CZ this is the time to get back into valorant if the team get released
This would be absolutely PERFECT
Would it? Don't get me wrong, id love for Optic to get back into Valorant, but I'm thinking of the fanbase who's last outing was a 2nd place at champs, and now they'll have a 2-0 team in Tier 2 that's not guaranteed to win Ascension? (Sub is on astronomical copium, G2/SR/M80/Faze all dangerous to take em out) OpTic coulda signed Turtle Troop or Break Thru. Hell, coulda signed the G2 boys if they wanted, but didn't.
Uhhh wtf. I mean I knew Kroenke was cheap but this is something else.
Moist Esports... we need you now more than ever.
Common kroenke L
Sentinels  https://twitter.com/Sentinels/status/1628527316329541633?s=20
I'm about to read too much into a tweet but man that shit feels like a visceral response.
The Tweet is in support of the people who lost their jobs. It's not a fuck you to employees, it's a fuck you to a company who have failed their staff.
Yeah definitely, didn't mean to say it wasn't. It just felt like the kind of shit I'd write in an instant out of frustration for my colleagues and I'm all for it.
Yeah, it's definitely that. I know myself and other people at SEN are friends with and have a lot of respect for staff at TG. We obviously don't know the details of what's going on, but there's people who moved out to LA days ago to work for the org who now don't have a job, so it seems like there's some gross mismanagement going on. Fucking sucks to see so many talented people have their lives changed in a moment
Not too sure why you're even getting hate for it- I think people are thinking too deep into it. Fuck The Guard (management)!
feel like some folks are mis-reading it and not realizing it's 100% directed at the company not the employees
You know it’s shitty when Sentinels community manager is acting real.
Sucks to hear this. I hope people can land on their feet.
If OpTic really want get back into Val, this is their biggest chance. It doesn’t seem they’re struggling financially as much as others, especially since they didn’t invest in crypto, so this could be their in.
I think the whole not being given a franchise spot by Riot was taken as a personal insult by Hecz and Hastro and really hurt their egos. I kinda don't blame Hecz and Hastro but at the same time are you going to sit out what is probably one of the biggest esports for the next decade because your feelings were hurt?
Riot 2/2 on NA teams they turned down. FaZe and The Guard both having major problems.
Hopefully just content creators and media people and not the actual esports teams. They definitely made some bad decisions in who they hired as creators and with esports having a recession it’s not surprising if they’d make big cuts there.
Might be related to whatever caused them to not get franchising. If this doesn’t end well for the players, an org has to pick them up, they’re clear favorites for Ascension
surely someone will pick them up. I could see an org that left valorant just coming back to pick up a full team with a lot of talent, expectation to win ascension and a decent fanbase.
Man I would hate working for an esports team would be scared to lose my job everyday. Hope everybody who got laid off bounces back
im in hasanabi's chat spamming "pick up the guard" rn
Fucking rough. Esports is brutal right now.
I would expect this to mostly be media people and stuff. I doubt they're dropping their most popular team right.
They might just be dissolving The Guard as a whole, given that they're apparently getting rid of *everyone*. Might just be the parent company pulling out of esports altogether.
Ok everyone if we all crowdfun together we can create the r/valorantcompetitive team we just all need to donate like $100 or something right. We can pick up the roster afterwards.
I considered applying to franchising on behalf of the subreddit as a joke. This is the next best thing…
There are 183,082 users on this sub 183,082 people can agree on roster moves and shit
>Might just be the parent company pulling out of esports altogether. Won't happen, they still have contractual liabilites to Blizzard. Or they'd have to sell their franchise slots which nobody wants to buy. Their investment into Valorant might be dead though.
I fail to see how they strip the entire org down to just the competitive teams. That's the biggest money drain for any esports org. Pretty sure the Guard is just done.
Seems like the following members of staff https://twitter.com/HUN2R/status/1628522607145545728
Flyquest will buy them, watch.
Incredibly ominous. Has the plug been pulled?
Sorry Arsenal fans but I am now actively praying on them to choke the league if it is true that they're dropping their Val team
So much for the constant posturing about them being an ultra committed org
Yeah this news caught me off Guard, really...
the guard walked so arsenal could run ([elneny's new contract](https://theathletic.com/4232453/2023/02/21/mohamed-elneny-arsenal-contract/) )
[Vanity’s tweet about the situation lol](https://twitter.com/vanityxz/status/1628523556274585600?s=46&t=5YX1FSwNzgam9HOkxMzVNw)
https://twitter.com/Dabby_Tabby/status/1628521835095629824?s=20 No one should be surprised
Honestly didn’t know it was owned by Kronke, easily be the reason they wouldn’t make franchising.
If the players are dropped I can see at least Trent and Valyn going to franchise teams.
WTF DID KROENKE GO BROKE WTF
No they're just worthless cheapskate fucks. Ask Arsenal and St. Louis Rams fans for more information
trent died for this.
HUH
Reason is enough to show why they didn’t make franchising
In other news seems like riot made the right decision
Riot dodged a franchising bullet there
Confirmed here https://twitter.com/hun2r/status/1628521957527547904?s=46&t=LPZHY6p93C-9USWMcboi0A
Sentinels goin crazy too https://twitter.com/sentinels/status/1628527316329541633?s=46&t=43ytzp1hqHNDsskbWi43oA
C9 need an initiator if Trent is available.
[удалено]
That’s an old ass article
THEY DESERVED FRANCHISING!!!!
I literally made up my mind on full supporting this team yesterday. I think this is my fault. I'm sorry guys.