Inside The Burger Brigade: Apex Legends Esports’ Rowdiest Fanbase

thegamer.com:

Team Burger were the underdogs coming into the ALGS Championship. The unsigned, independent Australians didn’t have an organisation to fund their trip across the globe to play in the biggest Apex Legends tournament to date, and while EA helps a little, unsigned teams have a lot more obstacles in their way. That underdog status is exactly why Eric Willis started supporting Team Burger in Raleigh, but neither he nor the players realised just how popular the Burger Brigade would become.

Team Burger would soon have hundreds of fans in the PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, sporting burger-shaped placards and out-cheering every other fanbase at the event. Countless more would support the underdogs from home. “I really don't know how it happened,” he says. “I was just the loud guy. And everyone's like, ‘you did this, you did this.’”

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Willis enjoys solo-queueing in Apex Legends and tunes into the big ALGS events, but isn’t really embedded in the Apex community, or at least wasn’t before the Championship. When the biggest ALGS tournament to date came to his home city, however, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend. When he and a friend arrived, they had to pick a team to support. “We were like, oh, Team Burger – alright, that's funny,” Willis tells me. “Oh they’re unsigned? Let's support them.” But he never expected things to get so out of hand. Team Burger ended up becoming the underdog story of the Championship, making it all the way to the final, and that’s in part because of the incredible support that he created.

Willis was the face of Team Burger’s support, partly because his moustache and large hat made him instantly