LONDON: Guild Esports, a UK-based owner and developer of esports teams, announced  the creation of its third professional team with the signing of a top-tier squad competing in Valorant, a major new 5v5 multiplayer tactical shooter game launched by Riot Games in June this year.

This is the first new team signing by the Company since its flotation earlier this month. The Valorant players will join Guild’s existing teams competing in Rocket League, a motor-racing and soccer hybrid  game, and FIFA, the eponymous football franchise.

The team of five players, which is moving from Sweden’s Bonk, recently achieved notable success by finishing in the top two in the recent Ignition Series and Mandatory.gg Cup tournaments. No consideration is being paid by Guild for this acquisition.

Players Yacine Laghmari ‘Yacine’, Malkolm Rench ‘Bonkar’, Leo Janneson ‘Leo’, William Sundin ‘Draken’, and Filip Gauffin ‘Goffe’ will kick off their career under the Guild banner by competing in the inaugural First Strike Valorant tournament.

The qualifying round for the European leg of First Strike, the first major international tournament being organised by Riot Games, commences in early November 2020. The competition will crown the first Valorant champions via multiple regional finals taking place from 3 to 6 December 2020. Each final will feature the top eight teams from the region, who will earn their spots via a series of merit based qualifiers.

The total prize pool for Valorant across all tournaments to date is estimated at $1.8m (Source: Liquipedia) excluding the yet to be disclosed prize money for the upcoming First Strike tournament.

All five players have signed a one year contract with an option to renew for another year. They will receive an annual salary and performance incentives.

Guild’s move into the Valorant genre will enable the Company to enhance its social media reach, particularly on the Twitch channel. The five players have a combined social media following of approximately 400,000 across all social channels, including the Twitch platform.

Valorant is expected to show strong growth in streaming and esports viewership over the long term. During the beta stage Valorant attracted a record single day viewership of 34 million hours on Twitch, smashing the previous record of 12 million hours, according to industry data. The game currently has an average of 70,000 viewers per day on Twitch, making it the platform’s eighth most popular title.

Carleton Curtis, Executive Chairman, said: “Joining the Valorant community is a perfect step for Guild and we are delighted to expand into the new exciting and emerging esports space. Valorant is destined to become a major esport with global reach and deep fan bases and it benefits from the prestige of being developed by best-in-class publisher Riot Games. With these signings, Guild has established itself as a multi-disciplinary esports business and we are looking forward to fielding players in new games as we continue to scale and invest in our business utilising the war chest we raised in our IPO.

Valorant is an exciting esport and since its launch this year has already made a big impact on the competitive gaming ecosystem, winning over top pros from established games like Overwatch. We have high ambitions for our top-calibre team in the upcoming First Strike tournament. We are proud to welcome the players to our Guild family where we will coach and support them to become world champions.”

Guild Esports PLC is a global fan-focussed team organisation and lifestyle brand that fields professional players in gaming competitions under the Guild banner. Guild is led by an experienced management team of esports veterans and co-owned by David Beckham. The company is headquartered in the UK and its shares are listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

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