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Team Liquid

Short name	Liquid, TL
Divisions	Artifact Clash Royale Fortnite Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Dota 2 Hearthstone Heroes of the Storm League of Legends PUBG StarCraft II Street Fighter Super Smash Bros. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
Founded	2000; 18 years ago (2000)
Location	Utrecht, Netherlands
Manager	Victor Goossens (co-CEO) Steve Arhancet (co-CEO)
Partners	Alienware HyperX Monster Energy NeedForSeat Twitch.tv SAP SE
Parent group	aXiomatic
Website	www.teamliquid.net www.teamliquidpro.com

Team Liquid is a multi-regional professional esports organization based in the Netherlands that was founded in 2000. With the release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Team Liquid signed their first professional players.

In 2012, Team Liquid recruited a North American Dota 2 team, marking their first venture into multi-genre management.^[1] In January 2015, Team Liquid officially merged with Team Curse under the Liquid banner, bringing on Steve Arhancet, his supporting staff, and former Curse League of Legends, Street Fighter, and Super Smash Bros. teams. Team Liquid's website was originally started in 2001 as a news site focusing on StarCraft. As of June 5 2018, Team Liquid has also created a Fortnite team.^[2] Currently, the Team Liquid Fortnite squad has been practicing and placing in the top of the leaderboards throughout numerous events.

Their European Dota 2 squad won The International 2017, which had one of the largest prize pool for any esports tournament in history.^[3]

History

The website was released on May 1, 2001 by Victor "Nazgul" Goossens and Joy "Meat" Hoogeveen under the domain teamliquid.cjb.net.^[4] On September 22, 2002, the website was moved to the current address of teamliquid.net. A day later the very first poll was posted as a vote for the website's name with the current name winning over other suggestions such as likwit.com.

Although Team Liquid was known as primarily a StarCraft news site, there are many sub sections on the forums dedicated to other games as well. It was announced on August 30, 2012 that Team Liquid would be expanding to also including Dota 2 as one of their main coverage games. On December 8, 2012, Liquid expanded their eSports franchise for the first time, with the announcement of the recruitment of a North American Dota 2 team.^[1]

On January 6, 2015, Steven "LiQuiD112" Arhancet joined Victor Goossens as co-owner of Team Liquid, officially commencing the merge between former Team Curse Gaming under the Team Liquid banner.^[5]

On September 27, 2016, Team Liquid sold its controlling interest to aXiomatic Gaming, an investment group including Golden State Warriors co-owner Peter Guber, entrepreneur Ted Leonsis, basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, and AOL co-founder Steve Case.^[6]

On December 16, 2017, Team Liquid dropped their Halo roster.^[7]

Ownership

aXiomatic is an entertainment and sports management company. Investors for the group include businesspeople Peter Guber, Tony Robbins, sports Magic Johnson, Ted Leonsis, and technology Steve Case, Eric Lefkofsky.^[8][9] The CEO is Bruce Stein, a former CEO and COO of Mattel Toys, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Kenner Products (Hasbro).^[10] On September 27, 2016, aXiomatic announced that it had acquired controlling interest of eSports team Team Liquid.^[11][12][13]

Other investors include Dodgers executives Lon Rosen and Tucker Kain, Warriors executives Rick Welts and Kirk Lacob, the Washington Nationals owners at Lerner Enterprises, Chicago Cubs president of business operations Crane Kenney, Donn Davis, co-founder of Revolution and managing partner of Revolution Growth, Zach Leonsis, VP and general manager of Monumental Sports Network, Mark Ein, chairman of Kastle Systems, CEO of Capitol Acquisition Corp, and founder and owner of the Washington Kastles,^[14] and former NFL player Dhani Jones.^[15]

It was announced that Victor Goossens and Steve Arhancet would continue their roles as co-CEOs of Team Liquid after the acquisition.^[16]

Websites

Main websites

• 
  TeamLiquid.net – The Team Liquid website primarily provides StarCraft II coverage but also has some coverage for StarCraft Brood War, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Heroes of the Storm, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. With the launch of StarCraft II, Team Liquid has grown into the largest StarCraft community on the internet, with over 220,000 active members and over twenty four million total posts. The website employs four person full-time staff at their New York City office to work on the site.^[17]


• 
  TeamLiquidPro.com – Website focusing on Team Liquid eSports team coverage.


• 
  Liquipedia.net – Is a volunteer-run wiki covering various eSports, beginning with Starcraft: Brood War and later expanding into titles such as Starcraft II, Dota 2, Hearthstone, Counter-Strike, Overwatch, Rocket League, and League of Legends.^[18]

Tournaments and events

In addition to running a community site and team, Team Liquid also hosts a variety of tournaments and events.

Team Liquid Starleague

• The two iterations of the TeamLiquid Starleague (or TSL for short) have been the biggest "foreign" (non-Korean) StarCraft: Brood War tournaments.^{[citation needed]} The first TSL sponsored by Razer in 2008 was highly anticipated at the time, sporting all of the world's top Brood War players. It was topped one year later with 2009's TSL 2, which featured a total prize pool of over $20,000 and remains the largest non-Korean Brood War tournament to date.


• With the release of Starcraft II, Team Liquid announced a third installment, sponsored again by PokerStrategy.com with a prize pool of $34,700.^[19] The tournament took place between March and May 2011. On April 25, 2012, a fourth installment was announced (TSL 4).

Team Liquid StarCraft II Open

• The TL Opens are one-day open single-elimination tournaments alternating between the NA and EU battle.net servers. The eight TL Open events that lead up to the TSL 3 also served as a qualifier for the TSL.

Team Liquid Legacy Starleague

• Announced on January 1, 2013, Team Liquid would be hosting a series of online tournaments for "foreign" players of StarCraft: Brood War.^[20]

Community events

• TL Attack: Modeled after a Korean TV show called Bnet Attack, a professional player plays games against non-professionals while chatting with the hosts.


• Liquibition: A King-of-the-Hill that is played in Bo7 mode.


• TL Arena: A professional player will be matched up with inferior opponents. With each win he gains, another handicap is added that limits his game play options, until he loses or he has defeated a certain number of opponents.

Esports Team

The gaming clan "Liquid" was founded by Victor "Nazgul" Goossens near the end of 2000 after deciding to leave his previous clan. Liquid started with four members for the first months and grew to eight players over the following year. The members of the Liquid clan are handpicked by Goossens based on both personality and talent.^{[citation needed]}

Becoming a pro-team

With the arrival of StarCraft II, Team Liquid announced plans to become an active Pro-Gaming Team. Shortly after, sponsorship by The Little App Factory was announced,^[21] which qualified them as a sponsored professional team. This allowed Team Liquid to pay their players a salary and send the team to events around the world. The team got a dedicated news site separate from the more community oriented site at www.teamliquidpro.com, announced and released on May 10, 2011.^[22]

On August 13, 2012, three players traveled to Korea in order to live in the OGS training house and compete in GOMTV's Global StarCraft II League (GSL).^[23][24][25]
Of the three players entering the preliminaries, only one, Dario "TLO" Wünsch qualified for the first two GSL events. He was eliminated out in the Second and First rounds respectively.

The third GSL was the strongest showing of Team Liquid thus far. Three players, Hayder "Haypro" Hussein, Jos "Ret" de Kroon and Jonathan "Jinro" Walsh qualified for the main tournament. While Hussein lost first round and de Kroon in 2nd, Walsh made to the semi-finals, losing 0–4 to the eventual winner Jang "MC" Min-Chul.

In 2012, during GSL Season 2, members Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok and Yun "TaeJa" Young Seo made it to the Round of 8 of the Code S tournament, with TaeJa being eliminated while HerO advanced to the semi-finals of the tournament.

On March 2014, Team Liquid announced that it had picked up two legendary Melee players: Ken, who is known as the "King of Smash" and KoreanDJ, who is widely considered as the first player to defeat Mew2King ever since he was considered a God, thus starting its Smash team. After acquiring Curse Gaming, it also signed Hungrybox, who is considered to be one of the Five Gods of Melee, and Chillin, who was the first player to defeat Ken during his prime. On August 11, 2015, it picked up top Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player Nairo, who was the only player to knock ZeRo out of a tournament, ending ZeRo's 55 win tournament streak at MLG World Finals.^[26][27] On September 28, 2015, Team Liquid announced that KoreanDJ resigned from the organization and retired from competitive Smash, citing persistent hand and wrist pains.^[28]

Merge with Curse Gaming

On January 6, 2015, Liquid acquired the Team Curse's League of Legends roster, which consisted of Quas, IWillDominate, Voyboy, Cop, and Xpecial. The team finished the LCS Spring regular season in 6th place with a 10-9 record. On Week 5 and 6 of NA LCS Piglet was benched and replaced on the starting roster by KEITHMCBRIEF in an effort to try to improve their standings.^[29] In the playoffs they beat Counter Logic Gaming 3–0, before losing to Cloud9 3–2 and finishing in 3rd.

One week after the Curse merger, it was announced that Team Liquid acquired a Counter Strike: Global Offensive team that previously played under the title "Denial eSports".^[30]

On January 24, 2015, it was announced that HTC had become an official sponsor of Team Liquid.^[31]

On September 28, 2015, Team Liquid and Piglet parted ways after another failed qualification bid for the League of Legends World Championship, just a few hours after KoreanDJ resigned from the team.^[32] However, this was apparently a fake leak, as just a few hours later, Team Liquid announced on its Instagram that Piglet has extended his contract until November 2016.^[33]

On October 9, 2015, it was announced that Liquid would once again be fielding a DotA team, after more of a years absence from the competitive DotA scene. Signing the team formally known as 5JungZ, the new Liquid Dota would consist of a medley of new and old European talent.^[34]

Main management

Victor "Nazgul" Goossens is a founding member and now co-owner and co-CEO of Team Liquid. Nazgul originally competed in Brood War prior to forming Team Liquid.

Steve "LiQuiD112" Arhancet joined the Team Liquid staff when Team Curse merged with Team Liquid. Since the merge, Steve has taken the role of co-owner and co-CEO and primarily manages the League of Legends team.^[35]

Current roster^[36]

Game	Nationality	Name	ID	Notes
Clash Royale		Frank Oskam	Surgical Goblin	–
		Jarod Quesada	Azilys	–
		Diego Becerra	DiegoB	–
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive		Nicholas Cannella	nitr0	In-game leader, AWPer
		Jonothan Jablonowski	EliGE	Entry fragger
		Russel Van Dulken	Twistzz	Rifler
		Keith Markovic	NAF	Lurker
		Epitácio de Melo	TACO	Entry fragger, support
		Wilton Prado	zews	Coach
Dota 2		Lasse Urpalainen	MATUMBAMAN	Carry/Mid
		Amer Al-Barkawi	Miracle-	Mid/Carry
		Ivan Borislavov	MinD_ContRoL	Offlane
		Maroun Merhej	GH	Support
		Kuro Salehi Takhasomi	KuroKy	Support, Captain
Fortnite[37]		Thomas Mulligan	72hrs	–
		Adam Crawford	Strafesh0t	–
		Jake Brumleve	POACH	–
		Ryan Chaplo	Chap	–
		Noah Wright	Vivid	–
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft		Janne Mikkonen	Savjz	–
		Bertrand Grospellier	ElkY	–
		David Caero	Dog	–
		Jeffrey Brusi	SjoW	–
		Frank Zhang	Fr0zen	–
Heroes of the Storm		Aleksandar Milanov	ethernal	–
		Ivan Koturik	SportBilly	–
		Nils Gebhardt	Nurok	–
		Dennis Schneider	HasuObs	–
		Liam Simpson	Splendour	–
League of Legends		Jeong Eon-yeong	Impact	Top
		Jake Puchero	Xmithie	Jungle
		Nicolaj Jensen	Jensen	Mid
		Yiliang Peng	Doublelift	AD Carry
		Jo Yong-in	CoreJJ	Support
		Jang Nu-ri	Cain	Coach
		Kang Jun-hyeok	Dodo	Assistant Coach
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds		Jord van Geldere	ibiza	–
		Samu Kauppinen	Sambty	–
		Jim Gunnar Eliassen	Jeemzz	–
		Jere Kauppinen	Jembty	–
Quake Champions		Gaven Sorensen	whaz	–
		Tim Fogarty	DaHanG	–
		Shane Hendrixson	rapha	–
StarCraft II		Marc Schlappi	uThermal	–
		Dario Wünsch	TLO	–
		Jens Aasgaard	Snute	–
		Patrick Brix	Bunny	–
		Grzegorz Komincz	MaNA	–
		Yun Young Seo	Taeja	–
Street Fighter		Naoki Nemoto	Nemo	–
		Ryota Takeuchi	John	–
Super Smash Bros.		Kashan Khan	Chillindude	Melee
		Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox	Melee
		Ken Hoang	Ken	Melee
		Daniel Rodriguez	ChuDat	Melee
		Saleem Young	Salem	Smash 4
		Luis Rosias	Crunch	Melee Coach
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege		Leo Duarte Borges Pinto	ziGueira	–
		André De Jesus Oliveira	Neskwga	–
		Thiago Dos Reis Castro Silva	xS3xyCake	–
		Luccas Molina	Paluh	–
		Guilherme Alf	gohaN	–
		Adenauer Alvarenga	Silence	Coach
		André Kaneyasu	Sensi	Coach

Notable tournament results

Dota 2

League of Legends

StarCraft II

Super Smash Bros.

Street Fighter

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Heroes of the Storm

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

References

External links

• Official website