The E-sports in the new shooter Valorant is slowly gaining momentum and already has a top favorite: G2 Esports, the organization that has already made a name for itself in League of Legends. Its CEO sees his team as a kind of “Real Madrid” of E-sports. You can have any player you want.
Who is G2 Esports? The E-sports organization based in Berlin has existed since 2014 (then still under the name Gamers) and was founded by former LoL pro Carlos “ocelote” Rodríguez and his partner Jens Hilgers. ocelote is still the CEO today.
The organization maintains teams in several disciplines, where they often rank at the top, including League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Rainbow Six Siege, where they are currently participating in the GSA League.
Since the release of Valorant, G2 Esports has also assembled a team for this new discipline. Instead of simply acquiring a complete team, the organization picks individual players and builds the team itself. This approach seems to be working.
G2 Esports is that successful: Although Valorant currently has no own E-sports, several tournaments are already running in various leagues. G2 Esports has participated in four of them so far and won all four (via liquipedia).
The team managed to win its last victory in the Mandatory.gg Cup, which had a prize pool of €15,000, a quite impressive sum. Already, some pros are raving about how much money they can make with Valorant.
G2 Esports is the “Real Madrid” of E-sports
What makes the team so good? In a short interview with the US magazine Forbes, CEO ocelote talked about his team and how it is structured. Unlike other organizations, G2 Esports does not purchase an established team in Valorant, but builds it themselves.
To this end, they recruited Oscae “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho, a former CS:GO pro who played and won in the highest tournaments until 2018. G2 wanted to build the team around him – which was quite easy, as the CEO reveals, because somehow everyone wants to be part of it:
G2 has fortunately become the go-to organization for players who want to win and have fun at the same time. Just as it historically happened with Real Madrid in football, it is now happening with G2 Esports in video game competition.
ocelote in an interview with Forbes
According to ocelote, it is harder to “hit the nail on the head” when doing it this way, without purchasing a “ready-made” team, but building it yourself. It was coincidental that they managed to attract particularly pros from Counter-Strike.
The former CS:GO pro Ardis “ardiis” Savarenieks was also to be recruited by G2 – his past initially hindered this. The team he was eventually recruited from is Fish123, which ocelote now describes as one of the strongest in Valorant.
Instead of purchasing the 5-man team Fish123, G2 only extracted the star player ardiis and added him to their own team. This ruined Fish123’s plan to become professionals together.
Apparently, G2’s system is working quite well, as the successes show. It helps create a community and a fanbase around the team. The goal now is to become better and make Valorant the most popular tactical shooter for PC “on the planet”.
What is the current state of E-sports? Valorant is still in the early days of its release and is slowly moving forward from there. There is already an E-sports scene, but no official tournaments yet. However, these will come.
The first major tournament “100 Thieves Invitational” took place in April 2020 and was hosted by the E-sports organization 100 Thieves. There was no prize money at that time, but notable participants like the former shooter pro shroud and the star streamer Ninja. These are good signs for the future of Valorant E-sports.
