Effort Joins Fredit BRION

South Korean League of Legends team Fredit BRION announced the signing of Lee “Effort” Sang-ho on Tuesday, November 29. The support player is Fredit BRION’s first signing of the offseason and the first member of the squad’s 2023 roster.

Fredit BRION initiated a complete roster rebuild this offseason as the team parted ways with all of its LoL players. The process began on October 31, when Fredit BRION waved goodbye to jungler Eom “UmTi” Seong-hyeon after two years.

While a big departure, Fredit BRION didn’t stop there. Three weeks later, on November 20, the Korean squad released the remainder of its division. That included top laner Park “Morgan” Gi-tae, mid laner Kim “Lava” Tae-hoon, support Yoo “Delight” Hwan-joong, and substitute top laner Choi “Sw0rd” Sung-won, adding ADC Park “Hena” Jeung-hwan to the list of departees two days later.

With that, Fredit BRION were left without a single player on its active lineup, making it very clear that Fredit BRION will look to completely restructure its division for the 2023 season. And while the Korean LoL team remained fairly secretive of who’ll join the new-look roster, Fredit BRION unveiled the first piece of its project on Tuesday.

Effort was announced as the first signing of Fredit BRION’s 2023 League of Legends roster on Tuesday, November 28. The 22-year-old support joined Fredit BRION from Nongshim RedForce, who released its entire lineup on November 21 in favor of promoting the NS Challengers roster to the main division.

With Nongshim RedForce, Effort hasn’t achieved much in 2022, with RedForce finishing both the LCK 2022 Spring and Summer splits in eighth place. Although most of the team’s struggles were tied to COVID-19 issues, the Korean organization decided against running it back in 2023.

Effort’s underwhelming stint with Nongshim RedForce marked yet another shaky season for the player, who was previously a part of Liiv SANDBOX. Effort joined Liiv SANDBOX ahead of the 2021 season, and even though the team has achieved some success, they failed to make much noise.

Liiv SANDBOX finished the 2021 season with a fifth-place finish in the LCK 2021 Summer Playoffs and a fourth-place finish in the LCK 2021 Regional Finals, where they came two series short of qualifying for the LoL World Championship.

But despite Effort’s lack of success over the last two seasons, he joins Fredit BRION as a highly experienced player and one of the best supports in the region. Effort started his LoL esports career in 2017 with SK Telecom T1, with who he won two LCK titles and reached the semi-finals of LoL Worlds 2019.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t achieved much since his departure from SKT, but most of it had to do with the teams he played for rather than his individual performances.

Seeing Fredit BRION look to start fresh ahead of the 2023 season make a lot of sense, considering the organization hasn’t achieved anything since its debut season in the LCK in 2021.

In the first year in the league, Fredit BRION could only muster up a 10th and ninth-place finish in the LCK 2021 Spring and Summer, respectively. Things improved last term, as Fredit BRION finished the spring split in sixth place, thus reaching the organization’s first LCK Playoffs.

Still, they failed to leave a mark in the playoffs, where Fredit BRION crashed out in the first round against DWG KIA. In LCK 2022 Summer, Fredit BRION returned to their old ways and ended the regular season in ninth place with a 3-15 record.

It’s currently unknown who will team up with Effort at Fredit BRION, but considering the team started its roster rebuild with a high-profile signing, it’s likely that the organization is on the right path to put together a competitive roster.