Yup, that's right; apparently, you will now be available to support your favorite team via Valorant Points. The feature that we'll be talking about will most likely be built around with org-related content!
In the world of eSports, there are fans who literally want everything related to their favorite team or organizations; and well, these people today have reason to jump for joy. During a recent episode of The Wiseman podcast on the Twitch channel of former professional Valorant player, "Hiko", we got quite an exciting announcement from the Head of Esports at Riot Games, which touched on team-branded in-game content.
VCT Franchised Organizations Will Get Team-Branded In-Game Content
Up until now, professional organizations competing in Valorant have made money solely from participating in tournaments, and that was pretty much it. Sure, we can also argue that there was a Champions bundle, which was also a form of sponsoring the organizations, but come on, that was also related to qualifying for a specific tournament. And as Leo Faria, who is the Head of Esports at Riot Games claims, VCT franchising changed it all with a few more sponsoring options:
The first one is the stipend. We have a lump sum of money that's quite healthy that a team receives for just being in the League, and we want to give them predictable revenue. You know how much you're gonna get, so you're playing against that.The second thing is a revenue share from in-game goodies. As you know, for the past two years, the Champions bundle has been incredibly successful, and we're sharing 50% of the money with the teams - it's a sh*t-ton of money. Teams that participated in VCT Champions 2022, got over a million dollars just for being there. We are also giving teams a big portion of the revenue from their team-branded content that is coming - I'm not gonna say when because that's still in the works. But as part of the team selection process, we have worked with the teams together to build parts of in-game content with their own brand, and we are definitely looking at that. (source)
Now, we suspect that the content Leo Faria from Riot Games is talking about here is something like Sprays, Gun Buddies, and Player Cards. So yeah, nothing fancy at the first glance, but still kind of cool to have.
Moreover, we wouldn't expect team-branded weapon skins because, let's be honest – it would be too much work considering how big Valorant is; after all, there are 30 teams total in the franchising program.
Looking at the idea, you may think something like "nonsense! Everyone will buy content related to Fnatic, Team Liquid, Cloud9, etc., and ignore the rest, loool". As it turns out, Riot has found a solution to this:
The team-branded content also comes with a minimum guarantee, so even if your team is not yet super popular, you're gonna have a quite healthy number with a minimum guarantee. (source)
So yeah, even if you don't believe that it will be something outstanding, it is still cool that Riot Games is supporting professional teams in a few more ways, so that it will be profitable for every participating team.
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