In the 21st century, esports is becoming more and more popular on our planet. Today major Dota 2, CS:GO, League of Legends, and Fortnite tournaments are held at large stadiums with audiences, and athletes earn huge prize funds. Many countries recognize cybersport as an official sports discipline, and there is serious discussion about including it in the Olympics.
Esports is most comparable to traditional team sports. For instance, in football, an athlete trains to become a professional player throughout his childhood and then develops his career. By the age of 35-40, they exhaust their resources and announce the end of their playing career. But they do not imagine their life without sports and build a new sporting career as a coach, a sports official, or a team manager.
But in esports, a person can develop several careers simultaneously. In the last decade, we have often witnessed the creation of new esports organizations owned by active players. These owners still perform at the professional level and develop their offspring.
This material will tell you about organizations created by cyber athletes. You will learn about their achievements and interim results and meet their creators. In the end, we will summarize: is it possible to combine organizational issues with professional play?
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Team Secret
The team was created in 2014 thanks to Clement "Puppey" Ivanov, the first champion of The International. At that time, his former team, Natus Vincere, was going through a slump. After the first three TIs, where the team advanced to the grand final, 7th-8th place at the fourth tournament was a failure. Clement decided to have a change of scenery, create a new organization, and invite the best Dota 2 players there.
In its first season, Team Secret had an impressive roster. Puppey was joined by his faithful assistant from Natus Vincere, KuroKy. Two guys with cute nicknames, BigDaddy and Simbaaaa (N0tail and Fly), who had made a name for themselves playing for Fnatic, also became part of the team. But at the beginning of 2015, they were invited to Cloud9 and let to build the team around them. A star s4 became a mid player, and after the New Year, two talents, Arteezy and zai, joined the team, too. It seemed that no one would take a map from this roster in tournaments. But Team Secret didn't look unbeatable, despite their impressive winning streak at the tournaments of 2014-2015. They suddenly lost to Virtus.pro at TI5 and took only 7th-8th place.
Clement assembled star rosters every year and frequently won major tournaments (for instance, Shanghai Major 2016), but his results at the main tournament of the year weren't serious until 2018. By then, he abandoned the idea of assembling a star lineup, found like-minded people, and built long-term relationships with them. He was lucky enough to meet Nisha, a young Polish talent, with whom Puppey still plays. A little earlier, YapzOr became Puppey's "second KuroKy." Clement has recently had to say goodbye to him due to his health problems (we hope they would be temporary). Only 1st and 3rd position players who could strengthen the team changed in the roster.
Since the end of 2018, Team Secret has been one of the favorites of every tournament. Its results gradually improved: in 2018, the team took 5th-6th place. In 2019, it had 4th place, and in 2021, only Team Spirit prevented them from proceeding to the TI10 grand final. During the organization's existence, the Dota2 team has won five majors, and the total prize money has been over 15 million dollars.
Clement is focused on developing the Dota 2 roster and pays less attention to other disciplines. However, the organization has a Rainbow Six Siege roster that has played for three years. This is an average team of the European region and sometimes can get to a tournament top 3. Team Secret doesn't attempt to engage in other popular esports disciplines.
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In 2017, five new names were inscribed in Aegis history: KuroKy, Miracle, MinD_ContRoL, GH, and MATUMBAMAN. In the same year, these players under the Team Liquid banner managed to win several crucial tournaments, including The International. After the dizzying success, the roster played for Liquid for two years. In 2019, after the disappointing 2nd place at TI, the German captain announced the creation of a new organization where almost all the 2017 champion roster moved.
"Nigma" means "star" in Arabic. The new team players who were in excellent shape wanted to keep earning the titles, but the online era greatly affected their results. Kuro and co always feel wonderful at LAN tournaments and always have trouble playing from home. They won the Bukovel major before the covid and took the last LAN from WePlay. And then — Team Secret era, lack of motivation, and in 2021, the team failed to show decent performance at majors and qualify for TI10. Things are clearly worse than they were five years ago: Nigma fell to the second division and returned to the European Dota 2 elite only a month ago.
Nigma is characterized by strong core players. After MATUMBAMAN was replaced with w33 in Liquid, Nigma had only 2 substitutions in 3 years. The team's major players have been playing with each other for 6 years. They are hardly interested in financial matters, as each of them has a huge esports resume. They enjoy their pastime and playing Dota 2 together. They can gain peak form at any moment even in this state and win major events.
The organization focuses on Dota 2 and even has another roster in Southeast Asia with promising talents. However, the second roster is not yet able to qualify for the majors. There was also a CS:GO roster till 2021, but it didn't achieve much success and was disbanded.
B8
The first association with esports is Dendi. Danil Ishutin became so popular after the first The International that he will have thousands of devoted fans even in his worst shape. He can be put on a par with s1mple, PashaBiceps, and Zeus, the most recognizable esports personalities. He also wanted to have a brainchild he could invest in and win many major tournaments.
The B8 organization was created at the beginning of 2020. In the covid era, the tournament operators gladly invited a popular team with a legendary mid player to various events. Jumping too sharply to the tier-1 arena proved unbearable for the new team, and the players usually looked like whipping boys at tournaments. Danil changed rosters like his socks. First, he took reputable veterans of the CIS scene, then focused on unknown pub players, once he even sought the Brazilians' help. However, his team hasn't achieved success.
Nevertheless, the team can also boast its records. Once the team couldn't win 24 consecutive maps. It also holds an abysmal record of 21 consecutively lost series. Dendi's team showed poor performance on tier-2 and even tier-3 scenes, losing at D2CL tournaments, in the second DPC league. The open qualifiers became a real disappointment. The team often stumbles in the first stages, losing to some random stacks.
Today Dendi is the only person in the organization. He keeps trying to win one more The International and maintains his shape. We will definitely see B8 in the fall at the DPC league qualifiers. What if Danil's team gets through them?
Besides its Dota 2 roster, B8 develops a CS:GO lineup. It also doesn't have big achievements. The roster plays at domestic Ukrainian tournaments, sometimes making it to the qualifiers of the major tournaments. But it doesn't discourage the team, and the roster has been playing together for a year.
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It is evident from the title that now we will talk about the best team on our list. The OG tag is popular all over the world. It's the first organization that won two consecutive The Internationals, in 2018 and 2019. The organization took up CS:GO in 2019, but the roster plays at the tier-1 scene and sometimes even wins series playing against the grands.
OG was created at the end of 2015 by two friends, N0tail and Fly. Both came to Dota 2 from a similar game, HoN, and started their path together. After the unsuccessful TI5 in Cloud9, the guys decided to assemble their roster and invited young talents Cr1t, MoonMeander, and Miracle. That year, the first majors with big prize funds were introduced. OG won the first tournament in Frankfurt, going through the whole lower bracket. This is how the OG era began.
The magic of the organization extended to all the majors till 2017: 4 of 5 tournaments were won by the European organization. They reshaped the roster. At that time, Ceb was a coach, but OG dominated at Valve's major tournaments for a year. But it couldn't win The International and stopped far from the prize.
2018 saw a major Dota 2 tragedy: Fly and N0tail parted ways. The former decided the roster had exhausted its potential and secretly agreed to join Evil Geniuses. The OG roster was left without a captain, a carry, and an offlaner a month before The International qualifiers. N0tail, who held the fort, remembered this moment but found the strength to assemble the organization's golden roster. It included Topson, Ceb, ana, and JerAx. Through hardships of closed and open qualifiers in Europe, they made it to the main tournament and shocked the community in the playoff, beating all the tournament favorites on their way.
In 2018, TI became a real drama starring OG. A tenacious style of play that helped the team reach the upper bracket. The match against OG where Fly's new team would be destroyed and the handshake between two former friends would be inscribed in competitive Dota 2 history. And then, the crazy final where the LGD robots let N0tail create a sensation with its roster on the fifth map. In 2019, the team would come to the tournament as a favorite and crush all the opponents. OG became the first organization that won two TIs and with only one roster. After the tournament, all the team players took a vacation and left the professional arena for a year, sometimes playing for their organization as standins.
Now OG is represented by young and daring players who are almost as talented as their predecessors. They have won their first major in Stockholm and are dreaming of success at the main event of the year in Singapore. The change of generations was painless and fruitful.
OG entered the CS:GO competitive arena in 2020 but managed to get to the tier-1 and participate in all the largest events. The lineup cannot yet boast of such great success as its Dota 2 colleagues, but the last changes in the roster demonstrate the organization's ambitions. The CS:GO roster has earned $890 thousand in two years and a half — that's an excellent result for an average team. The OG organization has gotten a total of over $36 million in all the disciplines.
N0tail and Ceb didn't leave their teams after they retired: they support them in all the tournaments, work with them during the offseason, and share their experience. The legends' support was one of the main reasons for the change of generations in Dota and the successful integration of the CS:GO roster.
Bet on CS:GO with 1xBetAtypical example — Alliance
In the early days of the Dota 2 competitive arena, the Swedish Alliance roster became one of the dominating lineups. In 2013, five Swedes were the only worthy competitors of Natus Vincere. In the TI final, they arranged a whole feast of five maps with twists and a thrilling ending. However, the following year, the team's game began to decline, and the famous roster of Loda, AdmiralBulldog, Akke, EGM, and s4 finally disbanded after TI6. The organization hasn't returned to its former glory but its rosters still perform.
Unlike the previous organizations, Alliance was created without active players in 2013. At that moment, the Evil Geniuses owner opened an organization in Europe to popularize esports in Nordic countries. In 2016, former roster players got the rights to the organization: Loda and AdmiralBulldog started to manage Alliance together. The former became a Dota 2 roster coach and manager, while the latter focused on the streaming industry.
Once in charge, the former TI champions tried to assemble an effective roster and always helped it. The organization was always interested in other esports disciplines: Alliance has been represented in 16 of them. Besides the Dota 2 lineup, the Apex Legends (got to the Apex Global Series top 10 in 2022) and League of Legends (won major tournaments in 2014-2015) rosters were the most successful.
Loda and AdmiralBulldog managed the organization competently. Although the tag doesn't claim any titles, the teams are known and cannot be written off. The Dota 2 roster faces hard times, but Loda promised to change the situation. The Apex Legends roster is close to the top teams. The only thing that distinguishes them from the other people in our material is that the players took the organization at the end of their careers. They didn't combine their esports and managing careers but moved from one status to another.
Can you combine your career and the management of your club?
Organizations created by professionals are geared towards the discipline in which their creators play. They are not focused on other games or there are 1 or 2 not-so-successful rosters. However, the OG's achievements in Dota 2 and CS:GO show that professional cyber athletes can succeed as organization owners.
Source: cybersport.metaratings
