Team Vitality Owner Looking to Sign a ‘Valorant’ Team

In a recent interview, Team Vitality’s owner disclosed that he wants to see a Team Vitality Valorant team in the future 

European esports heavyweights Team Vitality have already conquered many titles. They feature in titles such as League of Legends, Rocket League, CS:GO and many others. However, owner, co-founder and president Fabien ‘Neo’ Devide has said he is looking to make Valorant his next virtual playground. 

Valorant’s impending success

“If Valorant commits to being a successful esport, and it will because Riot Games is behind it, then we definitely want to be involved,” says Devide. “At this stage, we can’t provide any details in terms of timing. Process-wise, we have our little birds out there informing us about the players to watch and to keep an eye on. We may already have a couple of Vitality players who may want to move to Valorant’s competitive scene, who knows. And why are we making these moves? It’s obvious, because we know how good, fair and sustainable an esports environment built by Riot Games is.” 

Team Vitality wouldn’t be the only organisation to pick up a Valorant team. South Korean organization T1 picked up Braxton ‘brax’ Peirce as their first Valorant player back on March 9th. A whole 29 days before he was even able to play the game in its closed beta! With teams like 100 Thieves picking up Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin as their team captain. It makes total sense for Vitality to enter the world of Valorant at some point. 

Riot’s esports experience

“It’s very exciting for us to see Riot Games entering such a competitive field,” says Devide. “The game is very interesting and we can see the research made behind it by Riot Games’ dev teams, and also the approach to extract the essence of existing games while building something new. As an organization it’s clearly great news: we’ve been working with Riot Games for many years and we know that they are by far the most achieved and one of the best ones to work with. The LEC is a masterclass, both in terms of production but also overall organization, The Worlds are brilliant and we are really excited to see the plans that Riot will offer us for Valorant.” 

“Whenever a new competitive game arrives and shakes up the field it always makes us interested,” adds Devide. “Some games have tried that in the past, but never managed to take off from a worldwide competitive side. Here, with the expertise of Riot Games, we can expect big things and as an org, we are definitely looking forward to seeing the scene develop.” 

With Riot Games’ previous title, League of Legends taking the esports world by storm years ago. Devide knows that Valorant’s esports success is almost guaranteed. However, he knows that it will still require hard work and determination to get to the top.

Could Valorant to be a bigger esport than League of Legends?

“League of Legends’ success was built in a different era and really grew with the exponential growth of esports,” says Devide. “This will be one of the biggest challenges as the scene in 2009 was really different from what it is right now. Before rivaling Leagues’ success, it’s important for Valorant to establish itself in the FPS competitive scene. Keep in mind that it has to create its own space between CS:GO, R6S, Overwatch and games which have been established for over 10 years. Once this is done, and it will take some time, I believe that Valorant could overcome even League’s success, simply because the game is more accessible and less complicated than its older brother.” 

On his final note, Devide says that they have some names in mind. Like all esports organisations. However, the Team Vitality Valorant team won’t be announced any time soon, it will be as carefully crafted as possible. 

“Yes [we] definitely [have people in mind], but don’t expect us to put some names out there, we know other teams are listening,”

Valorant will have many major competitions in the future. And with League of Legends own regional leagues such as the LEC, LCS and LCK. It would be no surprise if Riot takes the same route with Valorant esports. We delve deeper into Valorant’s impending success as an esport here.