TSM is currently valued as the most valuable esports organisation in the World.
Value: $410 million
1-Year Change: 3%
Estimated Revenue: $45 million
Revenue From Esports: 50%
Franchise Teams: LCS – TSM
Non-Franchise Teams: Apex Legends, Fortnite, Icon Influencers, Magic the Gathering, PUBG, PUBG Mobile, Rainbow 6, Super Smash Bros, Team Fight Tactics, Valorant
Owner: Andy Dinh
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX has paid $210 million for the naming rights to esports organization TSM. The gaming organization has now changed its name to TSM FTX on behalf of its new sponsorship with Hong Kong-based FTX, which stands for Futures Exchange.
The deal is for 10 years and $21 million per year, which is larger than the 19-year, $135 million deal that FTX paid for naming rights to the home arena of the NBA’s Miami Heat. All TSM players and employees will receive cryptocurrency from FTX as part of the deal. TSM is ranked as the most valuable esports organization in the U.S. with a valuation of $410 million, according to Forbes.
TSM (previously known as Team SoloMid) is a North American esports team, created around the community website SoloMid.Net by brothers Andy “Reginald” Dinh and Dan “Dan Dinh” Dinh in September 2009. Since June 2021, the organization has been known as TSM FTX in non-Riot Games esports, but is not permitted to use that name in League of Legends or VALORANT due to sponsorship restrictions.
The team was first seen in early 2011 after being formed to participate in the Riot Season 1 Championship later that year. The organization previously hosted TSM Darkness and the now-disbanded Team SoloMid Evo. TSM is the only team to qualify to the first seven World Championships and also is the only team to make the first ten NA LCS Finals.
History
Creation of Team SoloMid
After All or Nothing disbanded, Reginald decided to continue his competitive career by building a team in support of his site Solomid.net. The original roster consisted of Saintvicious, Reginald, Chaox, TheOddOne, and Locodoco but Saintvicious left Team SoloMid to join Counter Logic Gaming In February. This led the team to pick up subs for the upcoming months, such as FeedFest, Westrice, Chu8, Doublelift and Qlown. The month of April saw two major additions to TSM, with the arrival of Xpecial and The Rain Man.[1]
Riot Season 1 Championship
After the roster solidified with Reginald, TheOddOne, The Rain Man, Xpecial and Chaox, Team SoloMid attended the Riot Season 1 Championship on June 20, 2011. TSM took first place in their group, going 2-1 and being the only team to lose to the Singaporean team, Xan. Team SoloMid then met the French against All authority squad in the semifinals of the double elimination playoffs. TSM was defeated by aAa 1-2 and knocked down to the loser’s bracket. Team SoloMid met Epik Gamer, a fellow North American team, and defeated them 2-0 to advance to the loser bracket finals where they faced aAa for a second time. aAa started the best-of-three series with a one game advantage due to their previous win against TSM in the winner’s bracket. In a close match, against All authority bested TSM and took the series. Team SoloMid ended the tournament in 3rd place and took home $ 10,000 USD.[2]
Preseason 2
Team SoloMid attended several circuits in the Preseason 2. They placed third at National ESL Premier League Season 1, second at ESL Major Series – Season VIII second at the IEM Season VI – Global Challenge Cologne, failed to get out of groups at the 2011 MLG Pro Circuit – Raleigh, fourth place at the IGN ProLeague Season 3 in Atlantic City, and finished 7-8th place in the offline IEM Season VI – Global Challenge New York.
In light of failing to take first, TSM moved into a gaming house in the state of New York in late October of 2011. The move immediately produced results, as TSM took first in their next event, the 2011 MLG – Providence tournament.
Season 2
Once Season 2 started, TSM continued to attend events. Their last tournament in 2011 was the National ESL Premier League Season 2, where they placed third overall. The first tournament of the 2012 year that Team SoloMid attended was the IEM Season VI – Global Challenge Kiev, where they finised second to Moscow Five.[3]
Two months after Kiev, on March 13, 2012, TheRainMan resigned from Team SoloMid, citing differences in training regimen plans, as he wanted to focus more on solo queue while the rest of the team wanted to focus on full team scrims. He was replaced by Dyrus, who had already been living in TSM’s team house but playing for Epik Gamer.[4][5] After this change, TSM became known as one of the strongest teams in the world – and the strongest team in North America, winning or placing highly in every LAN event they played for the rest of the year. First-place titles included IPL 4, MLG Anaheim, IPL Face Off:San Francisco, and the GIGABYTE Esports LAN. TSM accrued by far the most circuit points out of any North American team, and so received the top seed to the season 2 regional final, which they won. At Worlds, TSM received a group stage bye as the top North American seed, but they lost in the quarterfinals to eventual second-place team Azubu Frost.
Season 3
As one of the North American teams that attended the season 2 World Championship, TSM were given an automatic seed into the first-ever season of the North American League Championship Series, along with Dignitas and Counter Logic Gaming. After week 5, Chaox was benched from the team and replaced by Cloud9‘s AD carry WildTurtle. Though the community as at first skeptical about the change, WildTurtle was quickly accepted after scoring a pentakill on Caitlyn against compLexity Gaming in his very first game with the team.
TSM finished the spring round robin with a 75% winrate and in first place, and in the playoffs they defeated Good Game University 3-2. The following split, they found themselves lower in the standings, winning only half of their games in the round robin. In the playoffs, they defeated CLG and then Vulcun to make it to the finals before losing to newcomer Cloud9, who had just been promoted into the LCS that split. TSM and Cloud9 would become rivals for the top position in the North American standings.
This year, it was Cloud9 that got the bye to quarterfinals at the World Championship, and TSM were unable to advance past the group stage, placing fourth – behind Lemondogs and ahead of the wildcard team GamingGear.eu.
2014 Preseason
At the Battle of the Atlantic, TSM played against Lemondogs, using new mid laner Bjergsen in place of Reginald for the first time. They won their series 2-0, and North America beat Europe in combined score.
2014 Season
TSM’s spring split went better than their season 3 summer split had, and they ended the round robin with a 22-6 record – just two games behind Cloud9. However, once again they found themselves lacking in the finals of the playoffs, losing to Cloud9 in another 3-0 series. In the gap between splits, TheOddOne retired and was replaced with former Copenhagen Wolves jungler Amazing; additionally Xpecial was benched and replaced by North American Challenger player Gleeb, formerly of Cloud9 Tempest.
With those roster changes going into the summer split, TSM struggled early on. Partway through the split, they added former MiG Frost AD carry Locodoco as a coach, but it wasn’t until they replaced Gleeb with Korean import support Lustboy that they started to rebound. With Lustboy, they finally accomplished what they hadn’t been able to since Cloud9’s entry to the LCS, and won the playoffs with a 3-2 victory over their rivals.
TSM once again received North America’s top seed to the World Championship, and they placed second in their group, behind Star Horn Royal Club and ahead of SK Gaming and Taipei Assassins. It was the first time that TSM with Dyrus had advanced past their initial seeding location at a World Championship, though they lost in the quarterfinals to eventual tournament winners Samsung White.
2015 Preseason
Amazing left TSM shortly after Worlds ended, citing homesickness as one of the reasons for his departure. Faced with residency requirements, TSM were unable to use any foreign player as their jungler, unless it was someone who had already been playing in North America the previous split. In November, they signed former Team Coast jungler Santorin as Amazing’s replacement; though he was initially from Europe, he qualified as an eligible player due to his participation in the North American challenger circuit that year.
TSM were the North American team invited to IEM San Jose, the first event where Santorin played for the team. They were seeded directly into the semifinals, but there, they suffered an 0-2 upset loss against the eventual runner-up Unicorns of Love, who had just qualified for the EU LCS.
2015 Season
TSM began the 2015 Spring Split with an 8-2 record after five weeks, holding first place during every week after the first. By virtue of their standing after the fifth week of the split, TSM was invited to the IEM Season IX World Championship. There, they defeated Team WE, CJ Entus (marking their first tournament win over a Korean team), and the yoe Flash Wolves to advance to the finals of the event, where they swept Team WE 3-0 to win the title. Though TSM themselves did not play against the GE Tigers at all (then undefeated in the LCK), or against any Korean team in a multi-game series, they still made history by being the first North American team to win an international event with Korean teams present since Chicks Dig ELO (which included Dyrus and Reginald) at the 2011 World Cyber Games and the first Western team to do so since Gambit Gaming at IEM Katowice in 2013.
TSM finished the spring season with a 13-5 record, giving them the top seed into the playoffs. After defeating Team Impulse and then Cloud9, TSM won their third North American championship, tying Cloud9’s record of most North American LCS championships won to date. Their victory also gave them the North American seed to the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational, where they looked to replicate their IEM success. However, the team underperformed in the group stage, winning only their match against wild card Beşiktaş and not qualifying for playoffs.
In the summer split of LCS, TSM started relatively strong, sitting at an 8-2 record at the end of week 5. However, they fell to fifth place by the regular season’s end, their lowest placement to date. Midway through the split, TSM tried out Keith, former substitute AD carry of Team Liquid, as a potential replacement for WildTurtle; however, he only started in one game, and TSM later announced WildTurtle would remain the starter.[6] In the playoffs, TSM beat Gravity Gaming and Team Liquid in the first two rounds, winning both series 3-1. In the finals, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, they faced off against long-time rivals CLG and lost in a convincing 3-0 series. TSM had already qualified for Worlds after their semifinal win due to their Championship Points from the spring split, and they ended up with the second seed from North America.
TSM were drawn into Group D, which became known as the “Group of Death” after drawing top LPL seed LGD Gaming, EU LCS second seed Origen, and LCK third seed KT Rolster. LGD and KT were originally favored to top the group, but LGD failed to meet expectations and split their series with TSM 1-1. However, after being swept 0-2 by both KT and Origen, TSM finished in last place with a 1-5 record, as both the Korean and European teams advanced. Longtime top laner Dyrus culminated his career with a heartfelt retirement interview before stepping down from the roster after his fifth year of competitive play.[7]
2016 Preseason
Three days after their last games at the World Championship, TSM formally announced the retirements of Dyrus and Lustboy and the departure of Santorin – all three of whom had been with the team for the entirety of 2015.[8] Lustboy remained with the team as an analyst, and Dyrus remained as a streamer. Soon after, they also announced open AD carry tryouts.[9]
On October 31, 2015, long-time CLG AD carry Doublelift joined TSM.[10] For their jungle position, Svenskeren entered talks to join both TSM and H2k. After initially turning down TSM’s offer of a tryout, Svenskeren was set to join H2k; however, TSM offered him a starting spot on their roster, and he accepted. However, H2k claimed that the transfer was illegal due to his having agreed in writing to join H2k.[11] Regardless, Reginald claimed that this move abided by Riot’s rules, and thus had signed Svenskeren to TSM on November 8.[12] Their eventual roster for IEM San Jose included Hauntzer, Svenskeren, Bjergsen, Doublelift, and kaSing.[13] TSM defeated LGD Gaming but then lost to Origen in the semifinals. After IEM, kaSing departed the team and was replaced by former star Fnatic support YellOwStaR.
2016 Season
TSM’s NA LCS season started out rocky, with a 50% winrate for the first three weeks. Regardless, they were invited to IEM Katowice in March. There, they dropped their first game to the Korean Challenger team Ever but recovered in the loser’s bracket before losing in the semifinals to eventual tournament winners SK Telecom T1 and finishing tied for third place with Royal Never Give Up. After returning to North America, their rocky season continued, and they finished in sixth place, the lowest they’d ever finished in the history of the LCS, with a huge comeback loss to Echo Fox in the last game. Guaranteed to face first-seed Immortals if they were even able to beat Cloud9 in the quarterfinals, TSM seemed poised to have their lowest playoff result in the history of the LCS as well.
However, after signing the well-known sports psychologist Weldon in the break before playoffs, TSM showed significant improvement as a team. They easily defeated Cloud9 3-1 in the quarterfinals and went on to crush Immortals 3-0 in the semifinals, although a lot of their win over Immortals was blamed on surprising draft picks by their opponents, including a top-lane Lucian in Game 1 and no sign of the heavily-in-meta Ekko from either team. In the finals, TSM faced CLG, a matchup with an even more heated rivalry than normal due to Doublelift’s team switch prior to the season’s start. Ultimately CLG won 3-2, and TSM finished the split in second place, out of reach of the Mid-Season Invitational. After playoffs, YellOwStaR expressed his desire to leave Team Solo Mid and in May 2016, he left the team. [14]
After a Korean bootcamp during the mid-season break to try out new support players, TSM signed Dream Team‘s Biofrost as YellOwStaR’s replacement. Despite being a LCS rookie, Biofrost proved himself almost immediately at the start of the Summer Season. TSM didn’t lose a single series until week 8, where they fell 0-2 to then ninth-place Phoenix1. That series was their only loss of the regular season, and they also nearly swept the Playoffs, defeating CLG 3-0 and then Cloud9 3-1 in the finals, qualifying them for the World Championship with North America’s first seed.
After their summer split performance, TSM were expected by many to advance out of the group stage, but after being drawn into group D alongside the eventually second-place Samsung Galaxy, Royal Never Give Up, and Splyce, TSM dropped three games in the group stage including two to RNG; they lost a second-place tiebreaker with the Chinese team based on head to head and did not advance. Soon after Worlds, TSM announced that Doublelift would be stepping down from the active roster for the 2017 spring split.[15]
In the wake of Doublelift’s retirement, TSM initially announced their withdrawal from the upcoming IEM Oakland tournament. However, after an encouraging recruitment process, TSM signed former Immortals and long-time TSM AD carry WildTurtle as their starter, and participated at Oakland. In the tournament, TSM dropped its only series against eventual tournament-winner Unicorns of Love in the semifinals, 1-2.
2017 Season
Prior to the beginning of the spring split, Revezaha and Abaxial joined as analyst and assistant coach, respectively. TSM’s 2017 was domestically very successful. In the spring split despite looking shaky at different stages of the regular split, TSM finished 1st with a 15-3 record. In the playoffs TSM defeated Cloud9 3-2 in the finals in a very close series to capture yet another LCS title. This also qualified them for the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational. Despite fan expectations being decent, TSM failed to live up to expectations and finished in 5th place with a 4-6 record. In the tiebreaker game against Flash Wolves the team lost and were knocked out of MSI. In summer after Doublelift’s return and WildTurtle’s departure to FlyQuest, TSM was expected to dominate the split. They would finish 1st in the regular season with 14 wins and 4 losses but were not back to their dominant selves. In the playoffs they defeated Team Dignitas 3-1 in the semifinals and then took down Immortals 3-1 in the finals to capture their third title in a row which was a first in NA LCS history. The win also qualified TSM for the 2017 Season World Championship.
They were seeded in a group that looked weak on paper and consisted of a shaky Flash Wolves, and untested Misfits Gaming and a questionable Team WE. TSM started off well with a 2 wins and 1 loss in Week 1 but then in Week 2 they performed worse and went 1-2. Having to play a tiebreaker against Misfits Gaming, TSM lost and were eliminated from Worlds in the group stage yet again in a fashion similar to last years’.
2018 Season
Spring Split
TSM did a major roster shakeup going into the 2018 season, importing the three-time EULCS champion botlane of Zven and Mithy, as well as replacing Svenskeren with 2017 Summer Rookie of the Split MikeYeung. SSONG, who had coached Immortals to the finals in the previous split also joined as head coach, with Parth moving back to the general manager position. This roster was one of the most hyped going into the Spring Split due to the championship pedigree of four of its players, though MikeYeung’s inexperience was seen as a possible weak point. However, despite these lofty expectations, they began the season 1-3. A 2-0 Week 3 brought them back up to an even record, but the team feel to 4-6 over the next two weeks. MikeYeung’s struggles and nervousness on stage were a major factor in their bad start, as well as a lack of team coordination. The team seemed to turn it on beginning in Week 6, losing only a single game to eventual first place 100 Thieves the rest of the way to finish 11-7, in an unprecedented four-way tie for third place with Team Liquid, Cloud 9 and Clutch Gaming. This tie required a tiebreaker series to determine playoff seeding, where TSM continued their dominance, dispatching both Liquid and Clutch to claim the third seed.
In the playoff quarterfinals, TSM was again matched up against Clutch Gaming, who had lost both of their tiebreakers to finish as the sixth seed. Despite Clutch having defeated TSM in both of their regular season matchups, TSM were heavily favored due to their late season surge and having defeated Clutch in the tiebreaker match only the previous week. Game 1 appeared to be going according to plan, as TSM heavily focused Clutch’s jungler LirA in the early game en route to an easy stomp of Clutch. Clutch fought back to get a come from behind victory in a scrappy Game 2, but TSM still looked poised to take the series. However, in one of the greatest playoff upsets in the history of competitive League of Legends, Clutch stomped TSM in games 3 and 4 to take the series 3-1, becoming the first team to ever defeat TSM in the quarterfinals. This also meant that TSM would not be in the finals for the first time in the history of the NALCS. Criticism was leveled at TSM allowing Hakuho to pick Thresh in all of the three final games, despite his dominant performances on it in all of Clutch’s wins.
Summer Split
Going into Summer Split it was announced that MikeYeung would be splitting time with their academy jungler Grig. As the split continued it seemed to become apparent that MikeYeung was not going to play as results with Grig were better possibly in scrims too. TSM ended the season in a 4-way tie for 3rd place along with 100 Thieves, Echo Fox and FlyQuest. Though their playoff position was already secured, the tiebreakers determined their seeding in the playoff bracket to determine if they would play against the debatably stronger team (which was Team Liquid and Cloud9). Their first match was against Echo Fox which they unfortunately lost, and ended playing FlyQuest which they won and ending up 5th place.
Since they seeded 5th place, they began their playoff run against the 4th place team which was Echo Fox. They won the series 3-2, where Bjergsen won player of the series and proceeded to play their historic “rivals” Cloud9 in the semifinals. They ended up losing the series 3-2 and would go on to play a 3rd place match against 100 Thieves which they won – Bjergsen again winning player of the series with a notable performance on Zilean.
Due to their lacklustre performance in Spring and not getting very far either in Summer, they did not immediately secure a place at Worlds 2019, where 100 Thieves became the 2nd seed from NA. Their only chance was to qualify as NA’s 3rd seed at worlds from the NA LCS Regional Finals 2018, AKA the Gauntlet. This included Cloud9, Echo Fox, Clutch Gaming and of course TSM. The first match TSM played was against Echo Fox who were the winners against Clutch Gaming in the first round. TSM swiftly took the series 3-0 and headed to the finals against Cloud9. They unfortunately lost against Cloud9 3-0, and did not attend Worlds for the first time since Season 1. This was questionably TSM’s worst year yet because of their expectation of international performance – though could not even make it to worlds. Fans were very unhappy with performance from the “Best in the west” duo Zven and Mithy, which did not seem to garner the results which were expected.
2019 Season
Offseason
With the departure of Hauntzer, Mithy and Coach SSONG, TSM were looking to build a new roster from the core players of Grig, Bjergsen and Zven. They began of the acquisition of new coach Zikz early in the offseason to help build their roster. It was then announced that the new support would be Smoothie acquired from Echo Fox, a player known for his in-game leadership to complete the botlane with Zven. Further on it was announced that Broken Blade a star player from the Turkish League would become the new Top Laner for TSM. He was a young player known for his mechanical talent and aggressiveness. As the offseason was coming to an end, Grig was having issues with his wrist and was not in a condition to be the starting jungler for the beginning of the split. Though TSM had acquired Akaadian for their academy team in the offseason and were happy to have him as the starting jungler in the 2019 Spring season, so that Grig could recover and come back when he was ready.
Spring Split
TSM quickly became one of the top teams during the season, placing 3rd overall. As Grig’s injury got better it was thought he would replace Akaadian as the starting jungler as originally planned, however because of the current performance of the team, it was decided that Akaadian would stay as the starting jungler for the rest of the season. TSM would go on as the 3rd seed in the spring starting their playoff run against Echo Fox which they won the series 3-1. Their semi-finals game was vs Cloud9 where they were down 0-2. Notably Peter Zhang had thought Akaadian did not have the confidence during the first 2 games, so he pushed him to play his own game and be more assertive in-game. This seemed to have changed the series dramatically for TSM as they reverse swept C9, which was believed to have been kickstarted from a monumental flank from Bjergsen as Akali in the 3rd game.
They went on to face Team Liquid in the final. At the time it was unsure who the heavy favorite in the matchup was. TL would classically be the favorite pick, however TSM’s academy team won the Academy finals recently, and no other teams were really active during this time therefore both teams would struggle to find scrim partners apart from their academy teams. Due to TSM’s academy performance, it was clear that TSM academy would provide much better scrim practice over their counterpart TL. They began the series decisively bringing the series to match point at 2-0, and were close to stopping TL from winning another championship. Unfortunately they were reverse swept losing the series 3-2, missing out on an opportunity to attend Mid-Season Invitational 2019. Game 5 of the series made fans very unhappy and stemmed a lot of criticism to Zven due to being caught out near the Baron Pit whilst TSM had a favourable lead, leading to TL snowballing to victory.
Summer Split
As Grig’s wrist had recovered and leading their academy team to win the Academy finals, it was announced that Grig and Akaadian would be splitting time during the season. It was unclear which jungler suited TSM the best, but it was soon decided half-way through the season that they would keep Akaadian as their starting jungler. As the season was nearing an end, TSM was not getting the results expected and decided to start Spica from their academy team, as their jungler. TSM placed 4th at the end of the season with a record of 10-8, where they would qualify for playoffs as the 4th seed.
They began LCS/2019 Season/Summer Playoffs with a series vs Clutch Gaming, a team which gained traction during the end of the season. They were unable to beat them and lost the series 3-1. Whilst they had acquired a fair amount of Championship Points from the Spring Split, Cloud9 had more due to their performance of placing 2nd in the Playoffs vs Team Liquid and missed going to World’s as NA’s 2nd seed. However, they had the advantage of being the first seed in the LCS Regional Finals, and would again be pitted head to head against Clutch Gaming. They started off the series strong, with the series standing at 2-0 to them. As the series would go on however, Clutch played progressively better and ended reverse sweeping TSM. This had been the second year TSM had not made World Championship in a row, which was regarded as an expectation by fans.
2020 Season
Offseason
Fans were worried Bjergsen might be leaving due to his contract ending, however it was soon announced to many fans’ avail that his contract was renewed and also acquired equity in the company to become a co-owner. Zikz was announced to be leaving TSM and head towards 100 Thieves as well as Zven heading to Cloud9 to replace Sneaky completing their botlane with support Vulcan of former Clutch Gaming. It was then announced that Smoothie was traded to Counter-Logic Gaming for TSM’s former support Biofrost, who would rejoin the roster as their starting support for the 2020 season. Further into the offseason it was rumoured, and then confirmed that Dardoch would join the starting roster as their starting jungler. By many it seemed to be a controversial decision due to his former attitude issues, however the fans seemed pleased due to the fact that they understood Dardoch to be a strong-minded player who would work well with the team. As the last player, Kobbe was announced to be joining Biofrost in the botlane, a player who just came off of a remarkable worlds run with Splyce. The whole roster was finalised with the final announcement being Peter Zhang becoming the Head Coach overseeing both the LCS and Academy team.
