T1 promise South Korean squad and North American Academy

During a recent interview with the CEO of T1, Joe Marsh, for ESPN Esports we got to know some interesting facts about the plans of the organization regarding the VALORANT esports scene. T1 was the first major esport organization that signed a player in Riot’s new FPS, they want to have involvement in both regions - South Korea where they already started tryouts and North America - on top of that, they will be launching NA Academy to help get the best roster possible in that region.

When CEO of T1, Joe Marsh, was asked why they decided to go so early with making an official T1 roster for VALORANT he said that: “We were looking for a game that will mirror what we are doing in South Korea with League of Legends, we looked at some other titles, but since a lot of top tier players were already signed in different games, only one had a good fit for us. We are not here to be at the bottom, we want to be a top tier team, win tournaments, and when VALORANT was announced we knew that we wanted to jump in first. When we signed with Brax he didn't even play the game yet, but he’s a good kid and we wanted to give him an opportunity, he’s nothing but a professional for us and a great leader and he helped us with the roster, coach and staff.”

T1 are looking at pro players from all different games like CS:GO, Overwatch, or Rainbow Six: Siege and they want to build a stable team for North America and South Korea. Joe Marsh believes in VALORANT’s success and that there are a lot of young talents that are not discovered yet for this game. That will be the goal of NA Academy, as Marsh says “to discover a new Faker”. Even though we still don’t know if Riot Games will allow organizations to have teams in multiple regions, Marsh states that if he had to choose one, he would go with the VALORANT North America team over the South Korean team. He wants to expand the T1 fan base in NA and have something globally that everybody can appreciate.

Joe Marsh also hopes that Riot Games won’t limit VALORANT tournaments for only regional cups and who wins those tournaments gets to play at Worlds Championships like it is in League of Legends. It’s important to have a World Championships since fans want to know who is the best of the best, but he also hopes that VALORANT will have a similar style of tournaments to Call of Duty, because in his opinion that will be the best path for an FPS game like this.

T1 will be very active with tournaments early in the summer and play about two of them per month. They want to participate in not only major tournaments, but also in minor ones, since it will be a good mix for the players. After a few weeks of waiting, T1 also announced their fifth member of the roster.