Ahead of VCT Americas 2025 kicking off later today, VALORANT’s International League has secured notable partnerships with Samsung SSD and gaming gear brand Pulsar.

As partners for VCT Americas, Samsung SSD and Pulsar will be featured throughout the competition’s broadcasts through various activations.

For Samsung SSD, the computer storage brand will present the ‘Samsung SSD Match Start’ which will commence select VCT Americas matches on its English broadcast. The brand will also develop a recap package made using Samsung SSDs.

Meanwhile, the Pulsar ‘Flick of the Week’ will highlight pivotal headshot moments that take place throughout a match. This will be available across English, Portuguese and Spanish broadcasts.

Outside of broadcast integrations, Pulsar’s mice, keyboards and mouse pads will outfit the PC fan area for those at VCT Americas’ Riot Games Arena. As the competition’s ‘Official Memory/SSD Partner’, hardware used by VCT Americas players will also be equipped with Samsung SSD’s 990 PRO.

Samsung SSD and Pulsar are no strangers to Riot Games’ esports ecosystem, with both brands already partners of other esports competitions within the developer’s catalogue.

With this deal, Samsung SSD supports VCT Americas and League of Legends’ newly rebranded LTA. Meanwhile, Pulsar is a partner for another VALORANT International League, VCT Pacific.

In the announcement, Riot Games noted: “The Samsung 990 PRO will truly be the perfect teammate for every VCT America pro and whether you’re a PC loyalist or console warrior, it can definitely be yours too.”

VCT Americas is set to commence later today (January 16th), with its kick-off tournament. Joining the 11 returning teams will be 2GAME Esports, a Brazilian organisation that secured promotion to the VCT through last year’s Ascension event.

Aside from Riot Games’ Americas event, VALORANT Champions Tour kick-off competitions in China and EMEA have commenced, with VCT Pacific starting on January 18th. 

The top two teams of VCT Americas’ first tournament of 2025 will secure a place at Masters Bangkok in February.

Following the start of the PUBG Mobile Global Open (PMGO) registration period, further details have been revealed regarding the event’s slot distribution.

Amateur teams from across the globe can sign up for qualifiers with the opportunity to compete at the competition’s Main Event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan this April.

Overall, seven teams will qualify through its preliminaries, with eight teams receiving direct invites. As the host country, a representative from Uzbekistan will also be invited.

From January 16th until February 9th, all amateur players can register to compete in 2025 PGMO qualifiers. The 16 teams who successfully advance from the open qualifiers will then earn a place in the preliminaries, where teams will compete in six matches every day.

From then, seven teams will earn places in the Main Event and an opportunity to play for a share of $500,000 (~£409,083) in prize money. The competition’s main event will take place from April 12th to 13th.

“We’re thrilled to bring back PMGO in 2025 and to be returning to Tashkent following the 2024 PUBG MOBILE National Championship Uzbekistan,” stated James Yang, Director of Global Esports Center at Level Infinite, Tencent Games.

“The 2025 PMGO is a tournament that highlights our commitment to growing the esports ecosystem in Uzbekistan and Central Asia, while creating incredible opportunities for amateur players worldwide to prove themselves on a global stage. We cannot wait to see who will rise to the challenge!”

The PMGO is part of PUBG Mobile’s aim to build grassroots initiatives and provide opportunities for amateur players to compete against the best players in the world.

2025 is set to be a significant year for PUBG Mobile esports. Alongside hosting PMGO, the PUBG Mobile Global Championship and the PUBG Mobile World Cup, Level Infinite aims to invest $10m (~£8.1m) in the 2025 season to bolster its ecosystem.

No one in the gaming or esports industry would tell you that 2024 wasn’t a challenging year. A public mantra in the industry was ‘Survive ‘Til 25.’ 

The financial correction created by ‘esports winter‘ carved away at margins and cut through threads companies were holding on to.

Similar to 2023, some organisations were unable to continue operations, whilst others developed new business strategies, such as combining existing entities into hopefully more sustainable ventures.  

However, despite a myriad of difficulties, there are signs that the esports industry may be finally finding itself from under the weight of 2023’s esports winter forecast — and the first glimpses of profitability.

If there was any silver lining throughout the ‘esports winter’, it is that player salaries and economic expectations are now more closely aligned with real revenues, rather than being paid and based on raised capital. 

Despite the industry’s ‘cold weather’, Team Liquid Co-CEO Steve Arhancet told Esports Insider the organisation never once considered changing its focus on competitive gaming.  

This new landscape helped Team Liquid reduce athletic operating expenses while expanding into more games and increasing its competitive rosters to over 15 titles going into 2025.

The organisation’s major milestones, such as winning Dota 2’s The International 2024, taking silver at the inaugural Esports World Cup, clinching League of Legends’ LCS Spring Split and reaching the M6 finals with its Mobile Legends Bang Bang roster contributed to growth in fandom and its budget sheets in 2024.

Team Liquid starts the year celebrating not only its 25th anniversary as an esports organisation but on the wings of its first year declaring EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) profitability since the organisation’s start in 2000.

Team Liquid’s Co-CEO quietly revealed the org’s EBITDA profitability first in Esports Insider’s 2024 year-end reflection piece. In a follow-up interview, Arhancet said that 2024 was “one of the best performing years athletically and financially for Team Liquid.”

Arhancet noted that this was also achieved by holding on to the organisation’s belief in ROI through competitive endeavours, rather than pivoting to other business models.

“Our 2025 plans are truly aligned with our main quest: to be a leader in esports, a global organisation with multi-generational fandom,” Arhancet said. “We’ve been strategic and thoughtful about the Team Liquid brand, maintaining our premium in the market as reflected with the high quality of our partners, like Coinbase, Honda, Alienware, SAP and many others.”

In 2023, Finnish esports organisation ENCE revealed to Esports Insider that its 2022 financial year reported a net profit of almost €1 million. However, recently, the company released its Overwatch and women’s Counter-Strike rosters and its 2024 revenue and profit are expected to decrease, according to Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat.

In a recent interview with Digiday, 100 Thieves and its brand partners detailed the organisation’s refocus on esports, yielding an alleged 75% partnership re-signing rate in 2024. 100 Thieves attributed leadership and sponsorship approach changes to the company’s improved business performance in 2024.

The industry has felt a cooling off of interest from brands for esports-related activations and partnerships. However, the Digiday article suggests an upward trend in marketers’ interest in esports. 100 Thieves as an operation significantly reduced its own esports footprint, however, its partnerships and brand activation campaigns have flourished. 

In 2024 alone, Esports Insider published over 635 stories that fell within its Partnerships & Sponsorships category. 2025 could bring back brand confidence in competitive gaming, if these success stories are indicators of things to come.

Outside of explicit partnerships within competitive gaming, brands have also continued to invest heavily in gaming experiences, especially on UGC platforms like Fortnite and Roblox — either less vocally as before or by taking more operations in-house.

Spirits brand Chivas Brothers brought in James Kent, formerly of EFG, as Global Senior Brand Manager – Ballantine’s Gaming & Esports.

“I’m lucky to have joined a brand that has already seen the opportunity within the gaming/esports space and will continue to invest into it,” Kent told Esports Insider over email.

Ballantine’s is no stranger to gaming and esports. Its previous explorations involved Gearbox Entertainment’s Borderlands 3 IP as well as partnerships with BLAST for the BLAST.tv 2023 Paris Major and with Tundra Esports ahead of 2023’s The International. Kent explained that in his new role, he’ll be applying learning from past activities to shape a modern strategy to reach core audiences in key markets.

“It’s safe to say that there is continued interest and commitment to gaming and esports,” Kent said.

Esports has always faced challenges with generating revenue. Historic business models have been restrictive to the types of deals that teams and organisers can sign, all while giving fans access to all content for free.

Riot Games’ recent decision to allow betting sponsors for League of Legends and VALORANT esports divisions in Europe and the Americas might indicate that change is in the air. 

Combined with the likely crypto-friendly Trump Presidency, the social impact of prediction markets, the recent expose series on Counter-Strike Skin gambling and the rumblings of a web3 gaming revival — 2025 will be an interesting one to watch.

According to Esports Charts, last year’s top viewership rankings for international events were slightly more diverse than in 2023, highlighting the growth of more esports scenes.

“Although the final statistics for 2024 have yet to be fully confirmed, early indicators suggest that this year has been more successful than 2023 in terms of esports livestream viewership.” Esports Charts Chief Sales Officer, Sergii Rudenko, told Esports Insider late last year. 

He continued: “Notably, Worlds 2024 set a new peak concurrent viewership record (excluding Chinese platforms), marking a historic milestone in the esports industry.”

Titles like VALORANT, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2 broke through to the top of the industry’s viewership this year. MLBB and LoL viewership calmed slightly from last year’s peaks. However, the titles still maintained their dominance at the top of the list. 

Overall, co-streaming has also created a positive industry trend — boosting viewership while reaching new audiences through a streamer’s ability to co-create content tailored for their viewers. However, it also brings additional challenges for studios and official broadcasters.

“Co-streaming has been a major force in esports this year, which underscores the need for innovation in the official broadcast space to keep audiences hooked,” highlighted Esports Charts CEO Artyom Odyntsov.

Added competition for engagement and attention should drive official broadcasts and studios to innovate their product and content, otherwise they risk being overtaken by the co-streamers themselves. 

This is a good rivalry to have if you’re an esports fan. The more broadcasts, the more choices viewers have to settle in and watch a stream that resonates with them the most.

However, game developers and tournament organisers mustn’t use co-streaming as an opportunity to streamline official broadcasts or, in some cases, remove them altogether.

Several Western esports organisations shifted further attention to East Asian markets in 2024. Teams like Fnatic and Team Liquid expanded into mobile esports, notably MLBB, and found success in significantly enhancing their visibility and engagement in the region.

Team Liquid’s new MLBB roster was the fifth most-viewed team in 2024 according to the data platform and the top non-LoL team on the list.

Odyntsov suggested that as more teams continue to tap into the growing mobile gaming scene, “the increase in viewership suggests that this trend is only going to gain momentum in 2025 and beyond, further blending Eastern and Western esports cultures.”

Despite it being ‘winter’, alternative events sprung up around the industry in 2024 to great success.

December 2024’s League of Their Own off-season LoL exhibition tourney was Red Bull’s most watched esports event ever, an apparent result of the brand’s off-season event strategy.

Days earlier, esports personalities Marc Robert ‘Caedrel’ Lamont and Eefje ‘Sjokz’ Depoortere launched The League Awards, an award show solely focused on celebrating the League of Legends ecosystem. The event peaked at 37,044 viewers, according to Esports Charts and from most accounts was an enjoyable experience.

The incredibly ambitious and controversial Esports World Cup garnered more (decidedly measured) mainstream coverage than any other esports event to date. If nothing else, Saudi Arabia’s investments in gaming and esports have given the esports community something to talk about.

Not to mention the country’s appointment as the official host for the Olympic Esports Games in 2025 and over the next 12 years.

Looking ahead into 2025, last year highlighted that the esports industry is an agile, scrappy and resourceful beast — not the kind to lay down and sleep through the winter. Removed from its business goals and challenges, it is a community driven by a passion for gaming, competition and camaraderie.

Esports has overcome mainstream critiques, led innovations in live online entertainment broadcasts and delivered new experiences for brands and audiences alike, sometimes on a shoestring budget.

The start-up of ecosystems has been built by hundreds of people who embody a ‘one-more-game mindset’. With any luck, 2024 will be the end of the industry’s cooldown and 2025 brings in a new dawn.

Turkish esports organisation Eternal Fire has secured a partnership with online sports bookmaker Melbet.

As part of the deal, Melbet’s logo will feature on Eternal Fire’s player jerseys worn by its esports rosters during competitions.

The partnership officially debuted during Eternal Fire’s opening game against Fluxo in the BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 Counter-Strike 2 event.

In addition to the logo placement, the two parties will join forces to host a range of activations, such as player autograph sessions.

According to the bookmaker, Melbet also aims to assist Eternal Fire in growing its FACEIT Club, a platform where fans of the organisation can interact with each other. The announcement notes that the organisation’s FACEIT Club already features 20,000 members.

“We’re proud to partner with Eternal Fire. They’ve not just been part of Turkish CS history, they’ve written it,” stated Melbet representative.

“With Melbet behind them, we hope that Eternal Fire can reach even greater heights, deliver new victories for their fans, and showcase the passion for CS in Turkey.”

In addition to supporting Eternal Fire’s Counter-Strike team, the partnership also covers the organisation’s PUBG roster.

Eternal Fire has recently become a household name within the Counter-Strike ecosystem. The organisation finished second in Season 20 of the ESL Pro League and reached the quarter-finals of the 2024 PGL Copenhagen Major.

Prior to the BLAST Bounty event, the organisation moved Buğra ‘Calyx’ Arkın to its inactive roster, adding Samet ‘jottAAA’ Köklü to its starting line-up.

Partnering with Melbet marks a time of commercial expansion for Eternal Fire. In January, the organisation announced a deal with digital collectable platform Kolex and pizza chain Pizza il Forno.

Riot Games has announced it is introducing Twitch subscriptions across several channels broadcasting League of Legends esports.

The initiative aims to provide fans with better viewing experiences in addition to supporting the leagues and the teams participating in them.

Subscribers will earn a variety of benefits ranging from ad-free viewing to a Subscriber-only chat where fans can take part in exclusive discussions while watching broadcasts.

In addition to the benefits, those who pay for a Tier 1 Subscription will earn exclusive in-game rewards. For the first Split of 2025, subscribers will earn the ‘Why Though?’ emote.

Riot Games started the initiative with the LCP’s Japanese Twitch channel and intends to roll it out across other LCP channels, the LEC, LTA, and LCK between January 15th and January 18th.

Rewards are exclusively available for paid and gifted subscriptions. This means that Prime subscriptions are ineligible to claim the rewards.

In addition, the emotes available to subscribers will be available to use across other Twitch channels.

In the announcement. League of Legends’ developer states the initiative ‘provides fans with a meaningful way to support their favourite leagues directly’. A portion of the revenue generated by Twitch subscriptions will go to the Global Revenue Pool which supports Riot Games’ leagues and teams across the world.

Rolling out Twitch subscriptions follows Riot Games’ test which took place in August 2024.

The test occurred during last year’s LCS playoffs and provided the developer with an opportunity to explore features that would expand the experience of League of Legends esports fans watching streams.

The rollout coincides with the start of League of Legends’ first splits taking place across EMEA, the Americas, China and Korea. Following the league’s first splits, attention will quickly turn towards the inaugural First Stand event taking place in March.

Esports tournament organisers BLAST and PGL have both announced Counter-Strike 2 events that will take place at the same time in 2027.

BLAST Bounty will occur January 13th-24th, 2027, starting at the same time as PGL’s unnamed tournament which will conclude on January 25th.

Aside from the dates, further details surrounding the tournaments have yet to be revealed.

Whilst these events are two years away, Valve’s new ruling details that organisers must announce events in 2027 two years in advance to ensure stability to CS2’s events calendar.

Valve’s new ruling has avoided significant direct clashes for the 2025 season. However, for 2027, it appears that teams may have to choose which tournament to participate in.

Alongside its 2027 events, BLAST and PGL have already announced an extensive slate of Counter-Strike 2 competitions that will occur throughout 2025 and 2026. In total, BLAST will host six events in 2025 while PGL will host four.

BLAST and PGL have extensive experience in hosting Counter-Strike tournaments. Both have hosted Valve-sanctioned Majors in addition to several tier-one events involving the best teams in the world.

Known for its BLAST Premier Counter-Strike circuit, the tournament organiser kicked off its first season of BLAST Bounty 2025 on January 13th at its studios in Copenhagen, Denmark.

For PGL, its first tournament of 2025 takes place in February where 16 teams will compete for a $1.25m (~£1.09m) prize pool at PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025. Bucharest, Astana, and Belgrade will also host PGL CS2 events this year.

Whilst the decision to run two events concurrently will see teams decide which tournaments they wish to compete in, the clash could open up opportunities for lower-ranked teams to compete in a high-profile event.

Disguised (DSG), an organisation founded by streamer Jeremy ‘Disguised Toast’ Wang, has excited VALORANT Challengers League SEA and disbanded its roster.

According to the organisation on social media, DSG’s decision to exit VALORANT Challengers involves Riot Games‘ exclusivity partnership with streaming platform SOOP.

The rights deal sees SOOP become the exclusive streaming partner of VALORANT Challengers SEA, thus preventing organisations from streaming matches on other platforms.

Due to the exclusivity deal, Disguised wouldn’t have the ability to co-stream its VCT matches in 2025 unless the team qualifies for VCT Ascension 2025 — the game’s main tier-two tournament —in September

On social media, the organisation stated: “With Riot’s recent partnership with SOOP for the SEA League, the exclusivity clause prevents co-streaming on other platforms. This would mean that we would not be able to stream our games for the next 10 months until our team qualifies for Ascension.

“It was a new and amazing experience stepping into the SEA region, and we appreciate the players’ hard work and dedication along with endless fan support.”

Disguised’s departure from VALORANT follows the organisation’s recent acquisition of John ‘Ja’ Arone from NAOS Esports in early January.

Despite only SEA’s VALORANT scene last year, Disguised racked up some notable performances. The organisation won VALORANT Challengers 2024 Southeast Asia: Split 3 and Predator League Singapore. However, DSG failed to gain promotion to VCT Pacfifc, placing 5th-6th in last year’s Ascension tournament.

Outside of VALORANT, Disguised will make its debut in the 2025 LTA season, the Americas’ tier-one League of Legends competition.

In May 2024, DSG partnered with international food chain Chipotle to field players in Tekken 8 and become a founding partner of the roster.

Fighting game event organiser Evo has unveiled its game line-up and a new expanded tournament roster for its 2025 edition in Las Vegas, USA.

Taking place in August, Evo 2025 will feature at least 15 esports tournaments across notable fighting games such as Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear -Strive- and more.

Evo hosts some of the largest fighting game tournaments in the world with thousands of competitors taking part across a range of competitions.

For this year’s Las Vegas event, Evo 2025’s main arena games are Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear -Strive-, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Under Night In-Birth, Mortal Kombat 1 and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Marvel vs Capcom 2 was also announced as Evo 2025’s Throwback Game.

This year, Evo 2025 has also expanded its tournament opportunities outside of its eight traditional arena games. Alongside, these events are an extended line-up of titles that will have official tournaments run by Evo and will take place on Evo’s stages.

So far this line-up consists of Killer Instinct, Virtua Fighter 5, Rivals of Aether II, The King of Fighters XV and BlazBlue: Central Fiction. According to Evo, at least two more titles will form part of its expanded roster of tournaments.

In addition to unveiling a huge roster of titles, Evo named restaurant chain Chipotle as the event’s presenting partner. 2025 marks the third consecutive year the restaurant chain has collaborated with the event after signing a partnership in 2022.

Widely considered the world championship of fighting games, Evo 2025 is one of three Evo events taking place this year.

In addition to North America, Evo will hold tournaments in Japan, France and Singapore. The Japanese event will take place in May while the French event will occur in October.

Ahead of its events, Evo will also host the inaugural Evo Awards, a ceremony celebrating the fighting game community. Categories range from player of the year to best cosplay.

The Evo Awards takes place on February 15th with voting closing on February 12th. Fans can vote in all of the categories on the event’s website.

Evo 2025 is set to take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center from August 1st to 3rd.

European esports organisation OG Esports has announced the appointment of Daniel Sanders as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Sanders joined OG Esports in 2023, working initially as its Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and will now be tasked with shaping the organisation’s strategic direction.

Sanders counts over two decades of experience within the gaming and esports industry, including notable roles at Tencent Games and Red Bull. He was also previously a manager at esports organisation Dignitas.

Prior to joining OG Esports, Sanders worked as the Marketing Director for Betting platform Luckbox, leaving the company a few months before the company shut down its B2C operations.

“I’m incredibly proud and honoured to be asked to lead OG,” commented Daniel Sanders, the new CEO of OG Esports.

“OG has such a strong and positive philosophy that has always resonated with my vision for the industry. The organisation possesses one of the most powerful brands in esports, and we have an incredibly exciting future ahead. I’m looking forward to bringing that vision to life with such a passionate and talented team.”

Founded in 2015 by Johan ‘n0tail’ Sundstein, OG Esports is a popular esports brand known for its Dota 2 efforts which include winning The International in 2018 and 2019. Aside from Dota 2, it currently fields lineups in Counter-Strike 2 and Rocket League. It previously held a roster in VALORANT but the team disbanded at the end of 2022.

Last year, the company secured several partnerships in the betting and web3 spaces, renewing its deal with cryptocurrency liquidity provider Wintermute, play-to-earn strategy game Valhalla, and Russian esports betting brand PARI.

In May 2024, OG also launched a documentary series called ‘Origins’ in collaboration with betting company 1xBet, showcasing the personal and professional lives of the team’s athletes.

Swedish esports organisation Ninjas in Pyjamas (NIP) has unveiled its new Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) roster for the 2025 competitive season.

The team has gone through a major overhaul, with only Ukranian AWPer Artem ‘r1nkle’ Moroz remaining from last year’s roster.

He will be joined by Danish IGL Marco ‘Snappi’ Pfeiffer, support Rasmus ‘sjuush’ Beck, and Portuguese duo Rafael ‘arrozdoce’ Wing and Michel ‘ewjerkz’ Pinto.

Ninjas in Pyjamas recorded a disappointing 2024 season which culminated in failing to qualify for the CS2 Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 after the tiebreaker loss to Team Spirit. In December 2024, Ninjas in Pyjamas placed 49th in Valve’s Global Rankings.

The squad hopes to turn it around this year, with Snappi joining from Team Falcons and sjuush leaving HEROIC after four years.

In particular, Snappi is known for winning the IEM Dallas 2023 with ENCE while sjuush was a key member of HEROIC’s success during his tenure. This included a first-place finish in BLAST Premier Spring Final in 2023.

Arrozdoce and ewjerkz join NIP from Portuguese esports organisation SAW, which secured a top-four finish at IEM Cologne in 2024. However, this will be their first experience on an international roster.

Accoridng to NIP, the majority of the new squad will make its debut on January 16th in a match against AMKAL in the CCT Season 2 Europe Series 16 Closed Qualifier.

Founded in 2000, NIP is one of the most recognised esports brands in the European scene. Following a merger with digital sports group ESV5 and its IPO on the NASDAQ exchange in July 2024, the company now operates across Sweden, China, Abu Dhabi and Brazil, with rosters across Rainbow Six Siege, League of Legends, Apex Legends, Rocket League and MLBB. As of today, NIP is trading at a price of $7.19 (~£5.86) per share.