Iconic League of Legends team TSM replaced by Shopify in pro league

theverge.com:

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

Shopify is entering the League of Legends arena. On Wednesday, Shopify announced that its Rebellion esports brand will be acquiring TSM’s spot in the League Championship Series (LCS), the pro circuit for US League of Legends esports.

The move marks a major change of the guard in the LCS. TSM, one of the biggest esports organizations in the world, got its start as a scrappy League of Legends team; the TSM acronym stands for Team SoloMid, which references a solo League of Legends player occupying the middle lane of the game’s multi-pronged map. In the mid 2010s, TSM was one of the most successful teams in the LCS, and the organization has entered other esports, signed Twitch streamers, and even bought an esports app.

But TSM has had some struggles as of late. Its LCS team hasn’t been quite as successful in League (outside of an impressive run in 2020). TSM CEO and founder Andy Dinh was fined and placed on a two-year probation by League of Legends developer Riot Games after an investigation found that “there was a pattern and practice of disparaging and bullying behavior exhibited by Dinh” toward TSM staff and players. The organization was forced to back out of a $210 million deal with FTX after the crypto company collapsed.

Then, in March, Sports Business Journal reported that TSM was considering dumping its LCS team, and in May, TSM announced that it was looking to sell its LCS spot and compete in League of Legends in another region. “I believe moving to another region will re-ignite our hunger to do whatever it takes to win a world championship,” Dinh said