Is the TSM Dynasty in Danger of Crumbling?

Team SoloMid (TSM) is one of the biggest esports brands in the world and its origins go all the way back to the very beginning of League of Legends esports. The organization has played a key part in transforming North American esports into the industry giant that it is today. Its monochrome colors, minimalistic yet sophisticated jersey design, chants of baylife, the ardent fans, and its infamous logo amalgamate into one thing – a larger-than-life esports organization loved and cherished by many across the world. Donning the TSM colors and repping the team is still a dream for many young, aspiring esports athletes.

At the time of writing, TSM’s League of Legends team has won seven of the sixteen splits of North America's League of Legends Championship Series (LCS). According to a 2020 report by Forbes TSM was valued at a whopping $410M USD that year, making it the most valuable competitive esports organization.

With a Twitter following of 2.23M and 2.34M subscribers on YouTube, TSM has a strong presence in regions including India, Brazil, and Japan and has set its foot in other game titles including Fortnite, Super Smash Bros, Apex Legends, and even Dota 2. In addition to its esports teams, TSM also employs a host of streamers and content creators to engage with its community.

The organization boasts the fact that it has nurtured so many young talents and given a platform for many to rise to the top. Over the years, as it was acting as a launchpad to fame for players, has it somehow slipped down? Is it struggling to stay in vogue today?

It is quite evident that the narratives woven around TSM have changed. What started out as a passion project may have soared to great heights in the past but has it managed to stay afloat?. The challenge for TSM currently is to retain its influential position in the industry and steer clear of the controversies that are looming around it.

The TSM story

SoloMid.net was founded by Andy “Reginald” Dinh and his brother Daniel “Dan Dinh” Dinh in 2009 and was serving as a League of Legends community website and play guide resource. It was only in 2011, the organization started fielding players to participate in professional League of Legends tournaments. The original roster consisted of Reginald, SaintVicious, Chaox, TheOddOne, and Locodoco. Reginald, the CEO of TSM, was a professional mid laner and one of the first big North American names to go pro.

Reginald stuck around as a player for two years till 2013 before retiring from pro play to focus on the business aspects of TSM full-time.

Most of the big stars of the organization like Dyrus have retired and this caused the organization’s stronghold to water down. The phrase ‘Baylife’ died and has been replaced by a common goal to achieve success and win trophies across all titles.

Over the years, Team SoloMid has managed to rope in some of the most influential League of Legends pros and personalities to its roster. TSM had the opportunity of working with Bjergsen, Doublelift, Svenskeren, WildTurtle, Lustboy, SwordArt, and the Best from the West: Zven and Mithy. Pros like YellOwStaR, PowerOfEvil, and KaSing also had short stints in the TSM roster. Despite so many changes to the team, TSM always managed to look good and dominant on paper.

With a stellar lineup each time around, TSM steadily rose to the top and remained a tough contender in the North American league. With 7 LCS trophies, TSM is the team with the most number of title wins. It is also the only team that has the most top-four finishes in the league with 16 appearances. As a result, the organization started raking in sponsors allowing it to build itself into one of the most valuable companies in the industry. Today, TSM partners with Logitech, Lenovo, General Motors, Twitch, Geico, and FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform amongst other brands.

In 2018, Forbes reported that TSM’s parent company, Swift, received $37M USD in Series A funding. This funding was backed by a group of venture capitalists including National Basketball superstar Stephen Curry, his former teammate Andre Igoudala and National Football League Hall of Famer Steve Young.

From being the first esports team to move into an esports house to building a grand gaming facility at Playa Vista, California, TSM has steadily increased its value. In 2020, the organization gave the world a tour of its facility, which was alleged to be the largest esports complex in the western hemisphere, spanning 25K sq feet and was worth $50M USD.

The deal TSM signed with FTX in June 2021 sent tremors across the esports industry, making it the largest esports sponsorship deal in history. The $210M USD and 10-year naming rights arrangement signed with FTX Trading Limited and West Realm Shires Services saw the brand rename itself as TSM FTX.

The organization has also diversified its portfolio of teams by picking up teams in other esports titles.

In 2015, TSM signed Leffen as their first Super Smash Bros. player. TSM acquired a Rainbow Six Siege pro team in 2019 and a year later, it also announced its move into the Valorant pro scene in 2020. Apart from this, TSM also has rosters in Apex Legends, PUBG Mobile, Battlegrounds Mobile India, Free Fire, and Wild Rift.

Some of the other titles it has tried and backed out from include Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Vainglory.

The team’s Apex Legends squad was recently crowned the champions of Apex Legends pro league’s (ALGS) split 1 playoff winners. Sadly, this is not the case for all the titles, though. TSM’s Valorant pro team’s success was short-lived. In the NA region, the team seems to be riding in the middle of the pack, if not the bottom, most times in Valorant tournaments.

Despite venturing into other esports titles and tasting success in quite a few, TSM’s LCS team is still its biggest asset. As per the data sourced from EsportsCharts via a pro license, in 2021, TSM’s League of Legends team raked in more average views compared to the organization’s Rainbow Six Siege and Valorant rosters in North America.

The column chart seen below shows TSM’s average viewers in 2021 in League of Legends (Spring and Summer Splits), Rainbow Six (R6) Siege’s North American League (Stages 1, 2 and 3) and Valorant VCT Stage 1 Challengers 3 and Stage 3 Challengers 2.

Unfortunately, things have taken a turn for the worse with TSM’s infamous League of Legends lineup, too.

Exodus shakes TSM’s core

It is natural for teams to taste both success and failures in phases. It is like an ebb and flow where a period of dominance is most times followed by a period of uncertainty and experimentation. Even the giants of League of Legends Esports - T1 had its fair share of experiencing mediocrity after being an unstoppable force for so many years. One would hope to see the teams make a comeback after the rough patch. But sadly in TSM’s case, it is a bit hard due to the frequent roster changes.

The League of Legends roster of TSM has been quite experimental in the last few years since each year the team seems to field new players. The team has fallen on its face, unable to cope with the pressure of mighty expectations and the organization solving a jig-saw puzzle, seeing who fits in best.

The initial shock for TSM fans was when Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg announced that he would retire from pro play in 2020 and become the head coach, almost after seven years with the team.

He was the face of TSM and even became part-owner of the organization in 2019. He quit TSM in 2021.

TSM’s dynamic with star player Yiliang Peter "Doublelift" Peng has not been the best, either. After a tumultuous relationship with the organization and after playing for the team on and off over the years, Doublelift announced his retirement from the roster in late 2020. Later, he revealed that his retirement boiled down to Reginald.

Well, Bjergsen and Doublelift were not the only people to have left TSM in recent years. Assets including former TSM president Leena Xu and content creator Ali "Myth" Kabbani have since left the organization in the last two years.

On 30th Jan, TSM shared that its general manager Parth Naidu was parting ways with the organization after seven years and serving multiple roles within the League of Legends team. Parth steadily rose the hierarchical ladder within the organization after joining TSM as an analyst in 2014, becoming the head coach, and later the general manager of the team. Only recently he released a manifesto about LCS’ coaching and player-nurturing culture, which received good reception.

On a Reddit thread on Parth’s departure from TSM, one user commented, “It’s rough but the team really isn’t the same team anymore. Everyone that made TSM TSM in its middle era is now gone. That sucks.” This resonates with how the fans truly feel about the organization and the apparent “domino effect” it is undergoing.

A downward wind

TSM who was once branded the top dog of North American League of Legends has been underperforming in its home soil for many years now. The team has missed Worlds twice in a row and has also failed to top the LCS scene.

The organization's historic partnership with FTX is also controversially restricted by Riot Games in 2021. Riot banned TSM from using its cryptocurrency exchange name sponsor FTX in League of Legends and Valorant broadcasts.

In June 2021, Riot’s Interim LCS Commissioner Chris Greely told Dot Esports, "The TSM and FTX sponsorship deal does not break any LCS sponsorship rules, but crypto exchanges fall under a category of sponsorship that carries activation restrictions. As a result, TSM’s new naming convention and FTX brand placement on TSM jerseys will not apply to the LCS or other Riot Games esports in North America."

TSM’s problems with Riot Games are not limited to its naming restrictions. In Jan 2022, Wired reported that Reginald was under investigation by both TSM and Riot Games after being accused of verbally abusing players and employees in the organization. The report shed light on the culture of fear that TSM fosters. The outcome of this investigation is expected to have a large bearing on the future of the organization. Sponsors and financial backers who have pumped money into TSM may start rethinking investments and may tighten their spending, which in-turn may cause the organization’s valuation to plummet.

The issues with TSM’s management came to light when Doublelift talked about Reginald and his alleged treatment of players of the organization. On his stream, the player claimed that Reginald has a history of verbally assaulting players to a point where they were driven to tears. There were several signs supporting Doublelift’s allegations. In 2013, the community got a glimpse of how ugly the arguments could get within the TSM gaming house as Dyrus and Reginald raged at each other during a livestream. Surprisingly, Dyrus showed his support for Reginald when Doublelift spoke against the CEO on stream.

TSM’s management style and ethics have gotten flak from the community in the past, as well.

Earlier in 2020, Leena Xu leaked sensitive information on a Twitch stream where she discussed the career of League of Legends jungler Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett, which potentially might have had permanent effects on his career. This led to speculations regarding Dardoch’s exit. Many criticized Leena for making such an important call in front of her employee (Doublelift) and following the backlash, she was forced to make a public apology.

Numbers aren’t in TSM’s favor

Following the exit of prominent members of the organization and amidst all the controversy, TSM finds itself in a tough spot. According to a report by Digiday, TSM has seen a sharp decline in its combined social media following.

“In August, TSM’s social media following stood at nearly 80 million across platforms. In the months since, the company’s combined social following dropped to 49 million, according to the gaming and esports consultancy and data platform GEEIQ — a decline of nearly 30 million followers,” read the report.

Not just the social media following of TSM has taken a hit, the League of Legends team’s viewership numbers are also seemingly falling.

The roster’s viewership has been oscillating in the last five years in both the Spring and Summer splits, according to the data sourced from Esports Charts (pro license).

The bar graphs seen below depict the average viewership of TSM’s League of Legends team and they have gone down significantly over the years.

A drastic drop in average viewers can be seen in LCS Summer where the numbers plummeted from a whopping 303.78K in 2020 to 150.76K in 2021. TSM managed to make the playoffs after a 12-6 regular split and eventually went on to win the LCS 2020 Summer trophy. The high numbers for TSM matches could be probably tied to Doublelift’s return to the team as ADC and the team having such a successful run after a disappointing showing in the 2019 Summer.

According to Riot, “With the increased Average Minute Audience during the regular season, and in large part because of the refreshed Playoffs format, total hours watched for Summer Split were nearly 35 million (34,667,939), an increase of almost 72% (71.85%) from 2019. This helped make the 2020 Summer Split the most watched since 2016.”

The fall in TSM’s numbers from 2020 to 2021 could also be attributed to the fact that LCS Summer 2021 only had a peak viewers of 364K.

Now, TSM is officially entering the Dota 2 scene after it acquired Team Undying’s roster. The TSM Dota 2 team is all set to debut in the 2022 Dota Pro Circuit Winter Tour Regional Finals. It is very surprising and uncanny to see TSM, originally an organization that is so storied in League of Legends esports lore, field a Dota 2 team.

With TSM testing the waters of so many game titles and with the organization now stepping into the Dota 2 pro scene, the question that begs answers is: Is TSM making new ventures fearing failure in the League of Legends pro scene?

The NA organization has a lot on its plate and a simple failure to strike balance could harm the potential of the organization. The departure of their players and losses in the home turf of League of Legends are not healthy signs for the once heavyweights.

The problems plaguing Team SoloMid are not shallow ones, they go deep and seem to be inherent to the organization itself. TSM definitely needs a fix-up elixir and it needs it ASAP!

Fans of the organization, however, it was never about TSM winning. It was the charisma, the fan interactions, and the novelty of the players living their best dream. It is high time Team SoloMid finds its soul again.