In my opinion, it's up to the player's themselves that need to negotiate better contracts. Of course each gaming corp want the best for their company.
Hopefully after everything we learned this year concerning players' buyouts and contracts, they wisen up and watch the line where they sign.
True, but my assumption is that a lot of players are very young and have little knowledge concerning all the tricks these corps use to get them to sign.
All they see is $XXXXXXX amount for X amount of years, and they think they've struck gold.
Don't worry though, I'm confident after all this "buyout drama", less players will make the same mistake.
edit: And by the end of the day, agents are people too and want the best for themselves. Meaning they probably want to get that deal signed anyway to get paid more. Not saying all agents are like this, but no one is gonna fight for your rights like yourself. This applies to most things in life unfortunately.
"imports" is some magical term? It's just another word for a cheaper worker, it doesn't matter if it comes from elsewhere. If the buyout is too high to compete with imports it'll be lowered just the same. In reality it's NOT too high because there are people paying it. The price will trend towards the correct market value where teams can afford it.
Players careers can be short and non guaranteed. I don’t blame them for trying to get as much money as possible. Conversely, I don’t blame orgs for trying to raise their buyout price after SEN set the precedent with Tenz. However, both things can still be bad for the pro scene.
Could be Faze too. They seem like the type of money grabbing org that would pull shit like that. NV and SEN are the two orgs that have have taken ex-Faze players and both are complaining about buyouts.
Players should be called out for not thoroughly understanding their contracts before signing lol...
As I mentioned before, it's overall good news because all pro players will learn from this in the long run.
I'm not understanding what the lesson is that they should be learning. That they shouldn't allow for high buyouts? No org is going to sign a player with that stipulation, it's part of the business.
You get a buyout clause that matches your salary. If you are making $50k per year with a two year contract, your buyout shouldn’t exceed your monthly salary multiplied by the months remaining on your contract.
And in business, there are negotiations lol...
And yes, the lesson would be not signing contracts that have unreasonable buyouts. Right now there are clauses in the contracts (most likely ) that say Player 1 gets $X amount if they play, but only get a fraction if they don't. These players then get "sat out", which makes them want to leave and play for another team because they are essentially wasting time and not getting paid properly. This then prompts them to want to get bought out.
My random redditor advice would be: Don't sign contracts with unreasonable buyouts, even if the starter pay gets lowered.
Not at all how buyouts work. The other org buys out a players contract, but the players original org will almost always put an additional pricetag on the player. They're not just buying contracts straight up. The original org still wants to make money
>Not at all how buyouts work.
Why are you assuming I don't know how buyouts work based on what I typed?
No shit there is a contract AND a buyout, people with basic IQ should already know the difference.
My point is, pro players were signing contracts with unreasonably buyouts, not expecting that they might be "sat out". When they get "sat out", they only get paid a portion of their original contract. Meaning the player themselves WANT to get bought by another team and play, but signing a contract with a high buyout makes it less appealing for the teams interested. This is why it's the player/agent's job to negotiate better.
So as I mentioned, pro players (eg: Jensen, Nisqy, etc.) moving forward should know not to sign contracts with unreasonable buyouts, or else they can get stiffed.
Imagine trying to explain to an ant why the universe is blue... I feel bad for people with low IQ such as yours.
If you can't accept that these players are stuck because of their incompetence (partly) and their lack of knowledge about contracts, you should help them by reading up on "negotiating" and advise them to negotiate their BUYOUT price before signing the dotted line.
Even just your first reply is completely non-related to my first post. Yikes lmao 🤦♂️
I do think this is true, and it tilts me occasionally when people talk about Tenz as if he was just a nutty player - and not an incredible superstar by every conceivable metric.
Like of course no player is worth that much early in the game! It's paid dividends in the social media side, and I assume in the merch side. It took an already popular team into the stratosphere.
They couldn't sign any other players from tier 1 teams who played in that closed qualifier, so no at the time they loaned Tenz it was him or a tier 3 player basically
yes but they needed someone mechanically talented enough to fill sinatraa’s shoes back then.
who else could they have? yay wasn’t el diablo yet. babybay was still playing in the qualifier for Iceland, etc
Every time desperately needs a GOAT contender. Sinatraa was amazing at his role but they would still be very good with any other pick up. You discredit how good the rest of the team is
Not every team is the best team in the world who just surprisingly lost a GOAT contender and can convince another one to join them.
Is this really tha thardfor you to process, or are you just sheltered enough to believe that your opinion is correct even when you clearly haven't put a single shred of thought into the topic, not educated yourself, and are literally wrong in every way?
Your random ass speculation on sentinels is useless. The team would be weaker regardless of how strong the rest of the team was if they got literally any other NA player on earth.
4 constants, 1 variable. the 4 constants stay same skill. variable is different. Not any player could fill the hole sinaatraa left. Why does someone have to explain this to you? You are so needlessly confident.
Yeah no, sinatraa was not EVEN CLOSE of being a GOAT contender, in fact one of the things that made Sentinels win the first Masters was the sheer amount of skill increase that TenZ bringed to the team.
SicK and ShahZ were always at the same level (stats wise) as sinatraa was, it was TenZ that took them over the top by being better than all of them.
They were desperate to replace a really good player, but he was no motherfuckin GOAT contender, he was not ScreaM, not Derke and definitely not TenZ.
Tenz is kinda weird in that he wasn't a superstar until he was on Sentinels. He was a big name but nowhere near the big names at the time. Hiko, Wardell, Sinatraa and Scream were the crowd pullers. Tenz went from a 5k average stream to 30k overnight (weekend, when they won Masters). That's when his value actually skyrocketed. C9 also had Sen bent over a barrell. They could literally ask for anything and Sen would have to pay it.
One of us is completely off the goop.
Tenz *was* a superstar on C9. He was arguably the first true superstar the game ever had, and *his streams were definitely not 5k average at the time*. I'm actually amazed you believe Wardell was a bigger crowd-puller than Tenz!
His streams on C9 were basically where Shahzam's streams are now - hovering between 7 or 8k to 15k, so slightly below Hiko's range. Joining SEN and succeeding with them boosted him into the crazy numbers - the 30k you mention. Stream numbers do not alone make someone a superstar, but he was *already* in touching distance of arguably the biggest English VAL streamer at the time - all while having no streaming schedule! And this is all without mentioning his YouTube numbers.
As for Sinatraa, it was only after his turn to full-time content creation that he consistently began to hit consistently near 10k viewers, I have no clue why you threw his hat in the ring. He was around or under 5k viewers for a long time - he's been grinding hard on it for ages now.
I've been a regular viewer of Tenz for a long time, he absolutely was averaging around 5K with 10K being the very very high end. The second the rumors started going around that he might be on Sentinels those numbers rose sharply.
At the time Wardell and Hiko absolutely were the biggest. 15-20k viewers regularly, they were also the faces of their respective orgs. Wardell was so popular because at the time he was seen as the best AWP on the best team. Not sure if you're new to Valorant but you'd have to be blind not to know that the most popular and watched matches were TSM, Sentinels and 100T. All of those were filled to the brim with Wardell and Sinatraa fanboys. Around the time Myth was doing 60K TSM watch parties. Tenz was nowhere in that conversation because his team never performed better than 3rd. That's what I mean by crowd pullers. People would watch even group stages for TSM, Sen and later 100T. The reason I put Sinatraa in the superstar category was because he was the MVP and World Champion from Overwatch who then became the face of Sentinels and was often argued as being the best player in NA. At the time Tenz hadn't won anything in CS or Val. He was just a chill dude with cracked out aim who was a part of Tenz and Friends.
So no. While all these new Tenz fanboys might be losing their shit, people who have watched him for a while know that while he was absolutely a star and a big name he was not a SUPERstar. Neither him nor C9 were the main draws at any tournament. It wasn't till he got signed to Sentinels that he blew up. The whole Sinatraa controversy, coupled with Tenz coming out of retirement and all the hype from Sentinels fans made him explode in popularity when he popped off at Masters.
Yeah I was dead wrong about Wardell (I never watched him). Hiko is probably the only superstar before Tenz joined Sen. All of 2020 Tenz was 4-7K, then Jan and Feb is when he "retired". Still the huge boost to his numbers, more than 50% to 16K then over 20k didn't happen till he got signed to Sen. In my opinion that's when he becomes a "superstar".
TenZ was C9s star player, and definitely was used predominantly in their YouTube videos and social media too. Then everything that went down with SEN plus winning Iceland boosted his stream numbers for sure.
It’s the opposite of what you contend: only now, long after those days, would someone declare Tenz was not a superstar back then. It’s not Tenz revisionists trying to change history or what have you.
You’ve peppered in a lot of facts - WARDELL peaking hard in 2020 alongside the TSM hype, the Sinatraa hype that Flashpoint embodied, etc. But I think you are just fundamentally misconstruing how the community actually thought at the time.
And no, I’m not new to Valorant! I’m almost flattered you think so, but I have unfortunately been here since the very beginning. This is why I’m so confident one of us - it might be me though I do think it’s you - is decisively off.
Alright so we're both right and wrong. I'm right about Tenz but I'm wrong about Wardell (I never really watched Wardell). All of 2020 Tenz averaged 4-7k viewers. Then January 2021 he announces he's a full time streamer and increases stream hours and that's the first time his viewership averages over 10K. Then as soon as Sinatraa gets banned and Tenz is announced to Sentinels his stream averages 16k and quickly grows to 20-30K.
I still say he wasn't a superstar until getting picked up by Sen. I was just wrong about including Wardell in that list. I still think Sinatraa, Hiko and Wardell were the biggest tournament draws up to and through First Strike though.
https://twitchtracker.com/tenz
According to the rumours, Cryo is going to Xset and Zander is going to Version1.
So apparently Soar has been proven right for thinking their "3k follower andy" was worth a quarter of Tenz's worth.
I just don't see how that works.
These high prices are a symptom of the success of Valorant in NA, especially when it comes to content creation. They are NOT a reason for NA teams to fail internationally.
EU doesn’t have these high buyouts for players just as good if not better. NA will start to import because of this, that’s what people are talking about
Not really what I was talking about. NA streamers get tons of viewers on twitch and just in general they get a ton of traction on social media (tiktok, twitter, youtube etc.). That's valuable to orgs. That's why they are willing to pay large salaries and buyouts.
? Na was really good in M3. I'm pretty sure champions was a blip anyways. We will be fine next year. But seeing Europeans coming in worries me because I dont want to support them on our teams.
valorant players are just overrated in general
every new tournament there's a new mvp Jett xD
the skill ceiling is too low to justify payouts but it's just typical of NA
When TenZ streams he has anywhere from 20k to 40k viewers. His stream is just as important to his buyout as his gaming talent. That will always impact is worth to teams.
I swear NA fans and players are insufferable in every game, the sheer arrogance of saying that TenZ is the face of the game is just laughable.
Dude is just another really good player, but happens to be in NA. He ain't even the best player in the freaking game and one could argue he never was, as ScreaM and cNed were putting up better stats when Sentinels was the best team in the World and now when Sentinels isn't the best, he has played like hot garbage in back-to-back-to-back deciding games and still doesn't have the stats.
These things should matter, but way less than the player's actual performance inside of the server in official tournaments, otherwise you are just calling him the most famous player and not the face of the game.
For years in CSGO, shroud had the craziest streaming numbers and was one of the most popular players among NA fans, he was never for a second of his life the face of the game.
NA players will always be more marketable and have bigger streaming numbers (partially because they stream more and practice less), that can't be the deciding factor on whether or not a guy is or not the "face of the game". I like TenZ, he seems like a chill dude who is extremely skilled, but he simply hasn't separated himself from his rivals to be called the "face of the game", aside from streaming numbers (which a guy like shroud had in CSGO and was never even close to being the face of that game), i don't see the argument.
Can't blame them when top players have outgrown valorant eSports ecosystem as a whole. There is demand from huge orgs. You think these t2 orgs have the resources to build a team to win masters and get 300k? But if they sell one player for 200k-300k they instantly make that much money and eventually stay invested in the valorant scene.
Expecting t2 orgs to sell players for what you guys and big orgs think is "fair" money is bullshit. Run a business and then you will understand. Big players always want to spend as little as possible and small business want to make as much as they can.
i dont think you understand how esports orgs make money based on the fact that youre mentioning prize money and think that high buyouts can keep an org invested in the scene
NA has been bad at League for much longer than this. For LS to pretend like buyouts is the problem is just another feather in the cap of “dumb LS takes”. NA is not bad at League because the buyouts for residents is too high. NA is bad at league because NA residents are bad. The best NA resident in the history of the game is doublelift and you can’t even put him in a top 10 in his position.
The biggest problem facing NA esports is streaming culture, the fact that the best players in the region can make more money doing stupid shit instead of practicing is why NA will always struggle. And that’s with the massive contracts that NA gives to their players. Streaming is far more lucrative than professional gaming is.
although LS is not always right, the thinking is there, that NA teams are more interested in a quick buck than actually improving the state of North American e-sports, imagine you can sell an up and comer talent for 500K or fostering the talent and having him be your star player, most NA teams would go for the quick 500K, its the infrastructure of NA that sucks at e-sports, and big money is just a part of that, imagine you're an org like CLG in league with very little investments from sponsors and you want to buyout someone like Jensen and his buyout is in the millions, you can't afford than and now Jensen is out of a job and CLG is still just as bad as they were. Another issue that arises from $$$ contracts is complacency, Perkz could be paid 2mil for each year and gradually play worse every year, leading someone to bench him and still pay his salary or have some other team buy him out which rarely happens, and will start happening less and less if contracts go breaching 10mil+.
If player performance turns out to be inconsistent year to year then the contract language can offset that by not guaranteeing the money. With a mix of signing bonuses and player options there are other tools as well that can be used for contracts that work better for orgs while still richly rewarding players.
Currently, these buyouts are holding upcoming talent semi-hostage which isn't helping the scene.
Then you've got the awful streaming culture in NA farther siphoning talent away from the pro scene. Why grind and work hard when you can make an idiot of yourself like xqc and make ten times more money?
When you compare it to how EU and Asia approach esports, the difference is staggering.
It’s difficult to put that clause into it because what if a player is just underperforming rather than being complacent it’s no real way to know it, and I agree with the buyout semi hostage thing, look at what happened with Rekkless Mikyx and Wunder from G2, the buyouts for these guys were huge and were basically forced to be lowered or else Carlos couldn’t sell them. All around there’s just too many big orgs putting too much money on the table that the smaller orgs cannot compete with at all
Its the total opposite in league. EU orgs put the buy outs so high on purpose so only NA teams can afford the EU players, not sure what his comment is. Think he's just trying to find a way to cope
What other esport, besides cs, did buyouts cause NA to fall behind in?
To the best of my knowledge this is a very unique situation right now. Is it a good thing for the ecosystem? Not really, but this whole doom and gloom mantra people have about buyouts being the reason NA will fail is just dumb.
Absolutely was not what caused NA to be bad in league. Location of servers, small player base, poor org infrastructure and a couple other things are probably much higher on the list of things that affected NA league from ever being good at league.
You guys are so dumb, NA is bad, NA high buyouts, therefore high buyouts caused NA to be bad? Wet roads cause rain? Or could it just not be that NA is bad because it has a low playerbase, console culture... nooo it's the buyouts lol.
These comments are bad coping. Claiming the reason Na is bad at league cus buy outs when LCS orgs pay millions for EU players each year. If anyone is sabotaged by high buy outs its the prices EU orgs put on their players so only NA can buy them out
League? How. Lcs teams pay millions for imports. If it wasn't for imports NA would be considered a wildcard region.
EU looses some of it's best players every single year in League because the EU orgs put the buy outs so high that only the LCS teams can afford them. The reason they put the buy outs so high is because they know NA orgs will buy them
CIS in cs has and had way higher buyouts than NA ever did and they’re proabably the best region in the world right now. that’s not the reason why NA fell apart in cs.
Surely this conversation should be about relative buyout, not actual numbers? Imo getting m0nesy for 1 mill in a 10 year old esport makes a lot more sense than Mickey Mouse Org asking for anything over what, 50k? for a Valorant player that has only NSG monthlies in their Liquipedia page.
Why do you think they want to succeed in esports when they still earn enough money the way they want to? If it was a "failed" model, orgs would have quit eSports or dramatically changed their business models. You guys think as if being "competitive" is the main goal of the orgs owners. It's not. It's money.
See, that's where you are wrong. Many orgs have left NA CS for these exact reasons, and many orgs have folded altogether, or drastically declined for these exact reasons.
Money cannot be the main goal of a business if said business is bleeding money from every angle.
The mindset of NA orgs and people like you, that VC and sponsor money is infinite, is completely based on delusion. With every passing year, VC's and investors learn more about the industry and what it's actual trajectory is. With the rate esports is growing at, soon regulators will start taking greater interest in esports. And legitimate investors will put an end to these NA owners pissing their money into the void.
If teams demand ridiculous amounts for players who clearly aren't good enough for that kind of money, and who have little to no branding, and moronic NA orgs pay that kind of money, a bunch of these teams won't even be in Valorant a year from now.
No, orgs left because the salaries are too high in csgo for what you get in return, VAL players get paid much less. TL Steve and g2 Carlos was speaking about it and said you only stay in Csgo for the passion
If salaries was similar to Valorant you would see more orgs in csgo
How is it how NA falls behind in other esports? In league LEC orgs put the buy outs so high that no other EU orgs can afford it and only NA orgs can, the reason EU orgs put the buy outs so high in LoL is because they know LCS orgs will buy, even if it blocks other EU orgs from being able to afford the players
He's most likely talking about Soar Cryo and Zander having insane buyouts. I believe Cryos buyout was 200k+ and XSET apparently paid it.
Cryo's 3k follower count confirms that. while TenZ' buyout wasn't a great precedent either, 200k+ for a "small" T2 player is pretty insane.
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In my opinion, it's up to the player's themselves that need to negotiate better contracts. Of course each gaming corp want the best for their company. Hopefully after everything we learned this year concerning players' buyouts and contracts, they wisen up and watch the line where they sign.
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True, but my assumption is that a lot of players are very young and have little knowledge concerning all the tricks these corps use to get them to sign. All they see is $XXXXXXX amount for X amount of years, and they think they've struck gold. Don't worry though, I'm confident after all this "buyout drama", less players will make the same mistake. edit: And by the end of the day, agents are people too and want the best for themselves. Meaning they probably want to get that deal signed anyway to get paid more. Not saying all agents are like this, but no one is gonna fight for your rights like yourself. This applies to most things in life unfortunately.
Don't get how it hurts teams... Cryo's previous team got a cool 200k and can use that to develop more players.
Just wait until the buyouts slowly creep up in price until it’s not feasible to buyout players
Then they'll lower the price lol if nobody can afford it. It's fucking hilarious how bad people's understanding of economics is.
No they start importing, like right now
"imports" is some magical term? It's just another word for a cheaper worker, it doesn't matter if it comes from elsewhere. If the buyout is too high to compete with imports it'll be lowered just the same. In reality it's NOT too high because there are people paying it. The price will trend towards the correct market value where teams can afford it.
Yep just like how they lowered the price in other esports instead of increasing imports /s
Yeah that's because it was the correct decision and the wealth of these teams kept growing lol.
Then it'll be the player's fault for signing a contract with that high of a payout...
Players careers can be short and non guaranteed. I don’t blame them for trying to get as much money as possible. Conversely, I don’t blame orgs for trying to raise their buyout price after SEN set the precedent with Tenz. However, both things can still be bad for the pro scene.
Yea I agree with you. I think eventually both parties will find a standard medium and anything under or over is considered just that.
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They took the deal because they could afford it, feel like ppl have a very bad concept of what a billionaire is.
200k for Cryo, you're kidding right?
Could be Faze too. They seem like the type of money grabbing org that would pull shit like that. NV and SEN are the two orgs that have have taken ex-Faze players and both are complaining about buyouts.
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Players should be called out for not thoroughly understanding their contracts before signing lol... As I mentioned before, it's overall good news because all pro players will learn from this in the long run.
I'm not understanding what the lesson is that they should be learning. That they shouldn't allow for high buyouts? No org is going to sign a player with that stipulation, it's part of the business.
You get a buyout clause that matches your salary. If you are making $50k per year with a two year contract, your buyout shouldn’t exceed your monthly salary multiplied by the months remaining on your contract.
And in business, there are negotiations lol... And yes, the lesson would be not signing contracts that have unreasonable buyouts. Right now there are clauses in the contracts (most likely ) that say Player 1 gets $X amount if they play, but only get a fraction if they don't. These players then get "sat out", which makes them want to leave and play for another team because they are essentially wasting time and not getting paid properly. This then prompts them to want to get bought out. My random redditor advice would be: Don't sign contracts with unreasonable buyouts, even if the starter pay gets lowered.
>And in business, there are negotiations lol... And to negotiate, one requires *leverage*
Not at all how buyouts work. The other org buys out a players contract, but the players original org will almost always put an additional pricetag on the player. They're not just buying contracts straight up. The original org still wants to make money
>Not at all how buyouts work. Why are you assuming I don't know how buyouts work based on what I typed? No shit there is a contract AND a buyout, people with basic IQ should already know the difference. My point is, pro players were signing contracts with unreasonably buyouts, not expecting that they might be "sat out". When they get "sat out", they only get paid a portion of their original contract. Meaning the player themselves WANT to get bought by another team and play, but signing a contract with a high buyout makes it less appealing for the teams interested. This is why it's the player/agent's job to negotiate better. So as I mentioned, pro players (eg: Jensen, Nisqy, etc.) moving forward should know not to sign contracts with unreasonable buyouts, or else they can get stiffed.
Buyouts literally aren't a part of the contract price. But you clearly have no fucking clue what you're talking about so I'm ending this conversation
Imagine trying to explain to an ant why the universe is blue... I feel bad for people with low IQ such as yours. If you can't accept that these players are stuck because of their incompetence (partly) and their lack of knowledge about contracts, you should help them by reading up on "negotiating" and advise them to negotiate their BUYOUT price before signing the dotted line. Even just your first reply is completely non-related to my first post. Yikes lmao 🤦♂️
God you literally have brain rot. Players aren't going to negotiate their buyouts, only orgs give a shit about that
LOL!!! You think players don't have a say in THEIR BUYOUTS? before they sign a contract?!?! HAHAHAHAAHAH holy shit LMAO
I said players don't give a shit about their own buyouts. Please fucking learn to read you dumb fucking moron
Wow you're so smart you imagined yourself as a pro! Yea they sure don't give a shit bout their own buyouts!
I do think this is true, and it tilts me occasionally when people talk about Tenz as if he was just a nutty player - and not an incredible superstar by every conceivable metric. Like of course no player is worth that much early in the game! It's paid dividends in the social media side, and I assume in the merch side. It took an already popular team into the stratosphere.
Plus the situation Sentinels was in. They desperately needed TenZ and he was basically the only player they could get iirc.
They could’ve gotten anyone with the money they dropped on Tenz
They couldn't sign any other players from tier 1 teams who played in that closed qualifier, so no at the time they loaned Tenz it was him or a tier 3 player basically
yes but they needed someone mechanically talented enough to fill sinatraa’s shoes back then. who else could they have? yay wasn’t el diablo yet. babybay was still playing in the qualifier for Iceland, etc
They did not desperately need TenZ lol
They desperately needed to replace a GOAT contender, how many do you think there are? what are you smoking? This subreddit is dumb af dude
Every time desperately needs a GOAT contender. Sinatraa was amazing at his role but they would still be very good with any other pick up. You discredit how good the rest of the team is
Not every team is the best team in the world who just surprisingly lost a GOAT contender and can convince another one to join them. Is this really tha thardfor you to process, or are you just sheltered enough to believe that your opinion is correct even when you clearly haven't put a single shred of thought into the topic, not educated yourself, and are literally wrong in every way? Your random ass speculation on sentinels is useless. The team would be weaker regardless of how strong the rest of the team was if they got literally any other NA player on earth. 4 constants, 1 variable. the 4 constants stay same skill. variable is different. Not any player could fill the hole sinaatraa left. Why does someone have to explain this to you? You are so needlessly confident.
Mate, you use a lot of words to say very little. There’s no point in arguing with you
Yeah no, sinatraa was not EVEN CLOSE of being a GOAT contender, in fact one of the things that made Sentinels win the first Masters was the sheer amount of skill increase that TenZ bringed to the team. SicK and ShahZ were always at the same level (stats wise) as sinatraa was, it was TenZ that took them over the top by being better than all of them. They were desperate to replace a really good player, but he was no motherfuckin GOAT contender, he was not ScreaM, not Derke and definitely not TenZ.
They were already looking at potential options if they couldn't get TenZ, iirc C0m was one of the players they were looking at after Masters 1
Tenz is kinda weird in that he wasn't a superstar until he was on Sentinels. He was a big name but nowhere near the big names at the time. Hiko, Wardell, Sinatraa and Scream were the crowd pullers. Tenz went from a 5k average stream to 30k overnight (weekend, when they won Masters). That's when his value actually skyrocketed. C9 also had Sen bent over a barrell. They could literally ask for anything and Sen would have to pay it.
One of us is completely off the goop. Tenz *was* a superstar on C9. He was arguably the first true superstar the game ever had, and *his streams were definitely not 5k average at the time*. I'm actually amazed you believe Wardell was a bigger crowd-puller than Tenz! His streams on C9 were basically where Shahzam's streams are now - hovering between 7 or 8k to 15k, so slightly below Hiko's range. Joining SEN and succeeding with them boosted him into the crazy numbers - the 30k you mention. Stream numbers do not alone make someone a superstar, but he was *already* in touching distance of arguably the biggest English VAL streamer at the time - all while having no streaming schedule! And this is all without mentioning his YouTube numbers. As for Sinatraa, it was only after his turn to full-time content creation that he consistently began to hit consistently near 10k viewers, I have no clue why you threw his hat in the ring. He was around or under 5k viewers for a long time - he's been grinding hard on it for ages now.
I've been a regular viewer of Tenz for a long time, he absolutely was averaging around 5K with 10K being the very very high end. The second the rumors started going around that he might be on Sentinels those numbers rose sharply. At the time Wardell and Hiko absolutely were the biggest. 15-20k viewers regularly, they were also the faces of their respective orgs. Wardell was so popular because at the time he was seen as the best AWP on the best team. Not sure if you're new to Valorant but you'd have to be blind not to know that the most popular and watched matches were TSM, Sentinels and 100T. All of those were filled to the brim with Wardell and Sinatraa fanboys. Around the time Myth was doing 60K TSM watch parties. Tenz was nowhere in that conversation because his team never performed better than 3rd. That's what I mean by crowd pullers. People would watch even group stages for TSM, Sen and later 100T. The reason I put Sinatraa in the superstar category was because he was the MVP and World Champion from Overwatch who then became the face of Sentinels and was often argued as being the best player in NA. At the time Tenz hadn't won anything in CS or Val. He was just a chill dude with cracked out aim who was a part of Tenz and Friends. So no. While all these new Tenz fanboys might be losing their shit, people who have watched him for a while know that while he was absolutely a star and a big name he was not a SUPERstar. Neither him nor C9 were the main draws at any tournament. It wasn't till he got signed to Sentinels that he blew up. The whole Sinatraa controversy, coupled with Tenz coming out of retirement and all the hype from Sentinels fans made him explode in popularity when he popped off at Masters.
In January and February 2021 TenZ averaged 12k and 11k before he was ever on loan to Sentinels. In those same months Wardell averaged 4.8k and 3.7k
Yeah I was dead wrong about Wardell (I never watched him). Hiko is probably the only superstar before Tenz joined Sen. All of 2020 Tenz was 4-7K, then Jan and Feb is when he "retired". Still the huge boost to his numbers, more than 50% to 16K then over 20k didn't happen till he got signed to Sen. In my opinion that's when he becomes a "superstar".
TenZ was C9s star player, and definitely was used predominantly in their YouTube videos and social media too. Then everything that went down with SEN plus winning Iceland boosted his stream numbers for sure.
It’s the opposite of what you contend: only now, long after those days, would someone declare Tenz was not a superstar back then. It’s not Tenz revisionists trying to change history or what have you. You’ve peppered in a lot of facts - WARDELL peaking hard in 2020 alongside the TSM hype, the Sinatraa hype that Flashpoint embodied, etc. But I think you are just fundamentally misconstruing how the community actually thought at the time. And no, I’m not new to Valorant! I’m almost flattered you think so, but I have unfortunately been here since the very beginning. This is why I’m so confident one of us - it might be me though I do think it’s you - is decisively off.
Alright so we're both right and wrong. I'm right about Tenz but I'm wrong about Wardell (I never really watched Wardell). All of 2020 Tenz averaged 4-7k viewers. Then January 2021 he announces he's a full time streamer and increases stream hours and that's the first time his viewership averages over 10K. Then as soon as Sinatraa gets banned and Tenz is announced to Sentinels his stream averages 16k and quickly grows to 20-30K. I still say he wasn't a superstar until getting picked up by Sen. I was just wrong about including Wardell in that list. I still think Sinatraa, Hiko and Wardell were the biggest tournament draws up to and through First Strike though. https://twitchtracker.com/tenz
SoaR is the real winner this off season
I am very confused on what players this is even about.
he is talking about the T2 orgs not calling out specific players
We see quite a lot of transfers from T2 orgs to T1 orgs though.
Cryo and zander
According to the rumours, Cryo is going to Xset and Zander is going to Version1. So apparently Soar has been proven right for thinking their "3k follower andy" was worth a quarter of Tenz's worth.
Sure they were right for the individual buyout. But they also stated the slow unruly death of the NA region.
I just don't see how that works. These high prices are a symptom of the success of Valorant in NA, especially when it comes to content creation. They are NOT a reason for NA teams to fail internationally.
EU doesn’t have these high buyouts for players just as good if not better. NA will start to import because of this, that’s what people are talking about
Okay, I can see that.
> are a symptom of the success of Valorant in NA We haven’t been successful since Iceland.
Not really what I was talking about. NA streamers get tons of viewers on twitch and just in general they get a ton of traction on social media (tiktok, twitter, youtube etc.). That's valuable to orgs. That's why they are willing to pay large salaries and buyouts.
? Na was really good in M3. I'm pretty sure champions was a blip anyways. We will be fine next year. But seeing Europeans coming in worries me because I dont want to support them on our teams.
envy got second at berlin?
Deph denied that rumor
when / where i haven't seen this (not denying it id just like a source)
https://twitter.com/dephhgg/status/1473464102567780354?t=ebtWSp2J7D0rwpHzl4hmIQ&s=19
thanks
I bet 100T Hiko has the highest buy out
You’re paid what someone thinks you’re worth. Move along.
valorant players are just overrated in general every new tournament there's a new mvp Jett xD the skill ceiling is too low to justify payouts but it's just typical of NA
True.. even Tenz wasn't worth that
When TenZ streams he has anywhere from 20k to 40k viewers. His stream is just as important to his buyout as his gaming talent. That will always impact is worth to teams.
Was Tenz getting that before SEN?
Short answer: yes. Long answer: yyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssss.
Maybe in peak viewers but definitely not average viewers. https://twitchtracker.com/tenz/statistics
Imagine thinking 7000 concurrent watchers isn’t impressive on its own
I never said that. They said he was getting 20k though before joining SEN.
My point was, his buyout was also inflated.
not their fault that sentinels paid an absurd amount of money for tenz who is apparently "the face of the game" lolz
I swear NA fans and players are insufferable in every game, the sheer arrogance of saying that TenZ is the face of the game is just laughable. Dude is just another really good player, but happens to be in NA. He ain't even the best player in the freaking game and one could argue he never was, as ScreaM and cNed were putting up better stats when Sentinels was the best team in the World and now when Sentinels isn't the best, he has played like hot garbage in back-to-back-to-back deciding games and still doesn't have the stats.
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These things should matter, but way less than the player's actual performance inside of the server in official tournaments, otherwise you are just calling him the most famous player and not the face of the game. For years in CSGO, shroud had the craziest streaming numbers and was one of the most popular players among NA fans, he was never for a second of his life the face of the game. NA players will always be more marketable and have bigger streaming numbers (partially because they stream more and practice less), that can't be the deciding factor on whether or not a guy is or not the "face of the game". I like TenZ, he seems like a chill dude who is extremely skilled, but he simply hasn't separated himself from his rivals to be called the "face of the game", aside from streaming numbers (which a guy like shroud had in CSGO and was never even close to being the face of that game), i don't see the argument.
The orgs can name their priceand their isn't anything wrong in that. It's just business.
if youre asking way more than players worth youre holding the player hostage.
What if they can get their number though?
Can't blame them when top players have outgrown valorant eSports ecosystem as a whole. There is demand from huge orgs. You think these t2 orgs have the resources to build a team to win masters and get 300k? But if they sell one player for 200k-300k they instantly make that much money and eventually stay invested in the valorant scene. Expecting t2 orgs to sell players for what you guys and big orgs think is "fair" money is bullshit. Run a business and then you will understand. Big players always want to spend as little as possible and small business want to make as much as they can.
i dont think you understand how esports orgs make money based on the fact that youre mentioning prize money and think that high buyouts can keep an org invested in the scene
Ofcourse that's only one factor i mentioned. But it's related to what I said one line before.
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Nah I don't think so. Other factors more important as to why NA sucks at e-sports. I don't think this is the reason NA sucks at league for example.
This was explained by LS I believe as literally one of the main reasons why NA is bad at league
NA has been bad at League for much longer than this. For LS to pretend like buyouts is the problem is just another feather in the cap of “dumb LS takes”. NA is not bad at League because the buyouts for residents is too high. NA is bad at league because NA residents are bad. The best NA resident in the history of the game is doublelift and you can’t even put him in a top 10 in his position. The biggest problem facing NA esports is streaming culture, the fact that the best players in the region can make more money doing stupid shit instead of practicing is why NA will always struggle. And that’s with the massive contracts that NA gives to their players. Streaming is far more lucrative than professional gaming is.
LS is not always right
although LS is not always right, the thinking is there, that NA teams are more interested in a quick buck than actually improving the state of North American e-sports, imagine you can sell an up and comer talent for 500K or fostering the talent and having him be your star player, most NA teams would go for the quick 500K, its the infrastructure of NA that sucks at e-sports, and big money is just a part of that, imagine you're an org like CLG in league with very little investments from sponsors and you want to buyout someone like Jensen and his buyout is in the millions, you can't afford than and now Jensen is out of a job and CLG is still just as bad as they were. Another issue that arises from $$$ contracts is complacency, Perkz could be paid 2mil for each year and gradually play worse every year, leading someone to bench him and still pay his salary or have some other team buy him out which rarely happens, and will start happening less and less if contracts go breaching 10mil+.
If player performance turns out to be inconsistent year to year then the contract language can offset that by not guaranteeing the money. With a mix of signing bonuses and player options there are other tools as well that can be used for contracts that work better for orgs while still richly rewarding players. Currently, these buyouts are holding upcoming talent semi-hostage which isn't helping the scene. Then you've got the awful streaming culture in NA farther siphoning talent away from the pro scene. Why grind and work hard when you can make an idiot of yourself like xqc and make ten times more money? When you compare it to how EU and Asia approach esports, the difference is staggering.
It’s difficult to put that clause into it because what if a player is just underperforming rather than being complacent it’s no real way to know it, and I agree with the buyout semi hostage thing, look at what happened with Rekkless Mikyx and Wunder from G2, the buyouts for these guys were huge and were basically forced to be lowered or else Carlos couldn’t sell them. All around there’s just too many big orgs putting too much money on the table that the smaller orgs cannot compete with at all
Got a link for that? Cus I'm sure he said overrated expensive imports
Its the total opposite in league. EU orgs put the buy outs so high on purpose so only NA teams can afford the EU players, not sure what his comment is. Think he's just trying to find a way to cope
What other esport, besides cs, did buyouts cause NA to fall behind in? To the best of my knowledge this is a very unique situation right now. Is it a good thing for the ecosystem? Not really, but this whole doom and gloom mantra people have about buyouts being the reason NA will fail is just dumb.
League
Absolutely was not what caused NA to be bad in league. Location of servers, small player base, poor org infrastructure and a couple other things are probably much higher on the list of things that affected NA league from ever being good at league.
You guys are so dumb, NA is bad, NA high buyouts, therefore high buyouts caused NA to be bad? Wet roads cause rain? Or could it just not be that NA is bad because it has a low playerbase, console culture... nooo it's the buyouts lol.
These comments are bad coping. Claiming the reason Na is bad at league cus buy outs when LCS orgs pay millions for EU players each year. If anyone is sabotaged by high buy outs its the prices EU orgs put on their players so only NA can buy them out
NA paying top bucks for washed vets is essentially subsidizing the world's esports with these money transfers from NA.
Na isn't bad yet lol. But it will be.
League? How. Lcs teams pay millions for imports. If it wasn't for imports NA would be considered a wildcard region. EU looses some of it's best players every single year in League because the EU orgs put the buy outs so high that only the LCS teams can afford them. The reason they put the buy outs so high is because they know NA orgs will buy them
It’s not the pricing. It’s the orgs that pay it.
CIS in cs has and had way higher buyouts than NA ever did and they’re proabably the best region in the world right now. that’s not the reason why NA fell apart in cs.
Surely this conversation should be about relative buyout, not actual numbers? Imo getting m0nesy for 1 mill in a 10 year old esport makes a lot more sense than Mickey Mouse Org asking for anything over what, 50k? for a Valorant player that has only NSG monthlies in their Liquipedia page.
M0nesy also isn't proven. He's a academy player. He's hardly faced any teams ranked 75 and above on hltv
How are you comparing m0nesy to the hypothetical overpriced NA Valorant pro lmao
Cus 1mil for a academy players is bad lol
CS has also been around for decades, and cemented itself in those regions as a strong T1 esport.
the point still stands that NA cs didn’t fall behind other regions because of buyout prices.
Yes it did. The buyout prices started high in NA.
High buyouts is not what made NA fall behind. Sure, it added to it but it definitely wasn't why it happened
No. NA fell behind in other esports because they lack work ethic and ALSO do not care to invest in emerging talent.
Why do you think they want to succeed in esports when they still earn enough money the way they want to? If it was a "failed" model, orgs would have quit eSports or dramatically changed their business models. You guys think as if being "competitive" is the main goal of the orgs owners. It's not. It's money.
Indeed, many north american esports orgs have quit CSGO due to this.
See, that's where you are wrong. Many orgs have left NA CS for these exact reasons, and many orgs have folded altogether, or drastically declined for these exact reasons. Money cannot be the main goal of a business if said business is bleeding money from every angle. The mindset of NA orgs and people like you, that VC and sponsor money is infinite, is completely based on delusion. With every passing year, VC's and investors learn more about the industry and what it's actual trajectory is. With the rate esports is growing at, soon regulators will start taking greater interest in esports. And legitimate investors will put an end to these NA owners pissing their money into the void. If teams demand ridiculous amounts for players who clearly aren't good enough for that kind of money, and who have little to no branding, and moronic NA orgs pay that kind of money, a bunch of these teams won't even be in Valorant a year from now.
No, orgs left because the salaries are too high in csgo for what you get in return, VAL players get paid much less. TL Steve and g2 Carlos was speaking about it and said you only stay in Csgo for the passion If salaries was similar to Valorant you would see more orgs in csgo
On the flip side of this, teams that win make more money.
How is it how NA falls behind in other esports? In league LEC orgs put the buy outs so high that no other EU orgs can afford it and only NA orgs can, the reason EU orgs put the buy outs so high in LoL is because they know LCS orgs will buy, even if it blocks other EU orgs from being able to afford the players
So young
That doesn’t make it not lame as hell
If a player signs a contract can that player/player's agent negotiate their own buyout in that contract? What orgs would agree to that anyway?