One of the oldest e-sports teams in the world is changing its League of Legends
region. As announced by TSM CEO Andy Dinh on Twitter, TSM is moving from the LCS to another “Tier 1” region. He cites the reason as wanting to finally win a world championship.
Team SoloMid was founded in 2011 in the USA and offers e-sports teams in many different games. The team started with League of Legends and has celebrated most of its successes there.
What is Team SoloMid planning? On Twitter, Andy Dinh, the CEO of TSM, posted a video about a future region change of his “League of Legends” team.
- In 2024, TSM is set to leave the American LoL league LCS after more than a decade.
- The team wants to move to another “Tier-1” region.
- The possible regions are the LPL (China), the LCK (Korea), and the LEC (Europe).
What are the reasons? In his Twitter video, Andy Dinh explains that he wants to return to the beginnings of TSM and “do everything to be the best”. He talks about how proud he is of the fans and the championships won.
You can watch the video here:
In the second half of the video, he explicitly talks about the World Championship in League of Legends and that his team has never managed to win the Worlds. He explicitly states that the change is intended to ensure that TSM wins a world championship.
It is super sad to lose TSM, which defined League for years
Why is TSM the most important team for the USA?
- TSM won 7 championships in the LCS and qualified for the playoffs 18 times.
- Over the years, many well-known professionals were part of TSM, including Bjergsen, WildTurtle, Doublelift, and Dyrus.
- TSM was a global leader in “Social Media” and is among the e-sports teams with the most followers.
- Despite its success in the LCS, TSM never won a world championship.
- However, the last 2 years have not gone well for TSM in the LCS. They finished in the lower half of the table in the 2022 and 2023 LCS seasons.
The caster Isaac CB mourns the loss of such a team, but also mentions a change in the previously glorious team (via Twitter):
It is very sad to lose TSM, which defined League for years, but I have felt for a while now that we have lost them, and it is obvious that TSM is no longer interested in the LCS.
How does the change work? TSM must sell its slot in the LCS. In 2018, TSM paid nearly 9.25 million euros for a slot in the LCS. Now, according to Dot ESports , they want a sum of over 18 million euros.
That’s not such a high amount when considering that Riot sold such a slot for nearly 30 million euros in 2019.
The biggest LoL team relied on crypto scammers in 2021 and consequently had to fire people.
Which region will it be? As the site Dot Esports writes, the speculations point to the Chinese LPL. According to a reporter, there were already discussions between TSM and LPL organizers back in November 2022 about a possible change.
We have to wait until November for the Worlds 2023. However, the MSI this year has already concluded, and especially one LoL team showed how strong it is.
