VCT Pacific Picks Teams by Fandom, Not Wins | BuyBoosting

Fandom over firepower. That's Riot's new pitch for how they're selecting the next VCT Pacific partner teams, and honestly it tells you everything about where competitive Valorant is headed in 2026. Jake Sin, the head of VCT Pacific, sat down with Esports Insider and said the quiet part out loud — the next wave of partner selection is going to prioritize fan engagement and brand-building over raw competitive results.

"Increased Focus on Fandom" Is Corporate for "We Want Merch Sales"

Look, I need to give Sin some credit here. Most esports execs would bury this in so much buzzword soup you'd need a decoder ring. At least when he says "increased focus on fandom," you can parse what that actually means. They want popular teams. Teams that move the needle on viewership. Teams that sell jerseys and drive social media impressions. The competitive side? It's on the list somewhere. Probably.

And the thing is, this isn't coming from nowhere. VCT Pacific has been a genuine success story since its launch in 2023. The region has produced some absolutely cracked moments — Gen.G becoming the first Pacific team to lift an international VCT trophy, Nongshim RedForce going from Ascension to Masters champions in what was arguably the best underdog run we've seen in franchised Valorant. The mechanical talent coming out of this region is disgusting in the best way.

But now that the league has momentum, Riot is doing what Riot always does. Optimizing for the spreadsheet instead of the server. Wild.

I talked to someone close to the Pacific scene (not naming who, they're still under NDA with one of the applicant orgs) and they put it bluntly: "The application process feels like a marketing pitch competition with a Valorant team attached." Think about that for a second. You're applying to compete in the highest level of professional Valorant, and the thing that might get you in isn't your roster, your coaching staff, or your scrim results. It's your brand deck.

What This Means for Tier-2 Teams

If you're an org grinding Challengers right now, thinking your tournament results are going to earn you a partner spot, I have bad news. The message from Riot is pretty clear: build a brand first, win later. Or maybe don't win at all — just have enough followers.

Nah, that's slightly unfair. Sin did mention competitive track record as a factor in the selection process. But when someone asks you how you're choosing teams and your first answer is about fandom metrics, that tells you exactly where competitive results sit in the priority stack. It's not number one. It's not even number two. It's the thing you mention third so nobody accuses you of ignoring it entirely.

This probably crushes smaller orgs across Southeast Asia who've been developing insane talent without the marketing budget of a Korean conglomerate. Some of the most mechanically gifted Valorant players on the planet are coming out of the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand — and the orgs behind them are running on passion and prayer, not venture capital. These teams can absolutely compete. They just can't compete with the brand-building machine of an org backed by a $50 million investment fund.

OK so here's the real question nobody's asking: does this actually produce a better league? Because the entire justification for franchising was stability. No relegation means orgs can invest long-term. Players get real salaries instead of tournament winnings and energy drink sponsors. Sounds great on the investor slide deck.

The Franchise Model's Dirty Secret

Here's where it gets interesting. The franchise model was supposed to create a rising tide that lifts all boats. What it actually created is a two-tier system where the barrier to entry has nothing to do with how good your team is at Valorant. It's about how many zeroes are in your bank account and how many fans you can prove you have before you've even played a single official match.

That's the dirty secret of every franchised esports league. We saw it in the LCS with League of Legends. Teams got spots based on their business plans and investor presentations. Some of those orgs have folded since then. But the philosophy survived and migrated over to Valorant like it was changing agents between maps.

And like, compare this to how CS2 works. Say what you will about Valve's hands-off approach — and there's plenty to say — but at least a team can come out of nowhere and start beating everyone based purely on being cracked at the game. No franchise application. No "fandom metrics." No brand deck presentations. Just win. That's it. BetBoom just took home the Roman Imperium Cup trophy by beating G2 in the playoffs. Nobody asked them for their Instagram engagement rates first.

The open circuit has its own problems, sure. But at least it doesn't tell a team of five insanely talented players from Jakarta that they can't compete at the highest level because their org doesn't have enough TikTok followers.

What Riot Actually Gets Right

I'll be fair here because I'm not trying to doom-post for clicks (well, not entirely). The VCT Pacific ecosystem has genuinely improved the lives of pro players in the region. Before franchising, a lot of these players were making poverty wages or playing for free with the hope of getting noticed. The partner team model brought real salaries, real infrastructure, real coaching staffs. That matters.

Sin's transparency matters too. He could have given the standard corporate non-answer about "holistic evaluation criteria" and moved on. Instead he basically told the scene: this is what we value, plan accordingly. If you're an aspiring partner team, you now know the game you're playing. It's not just Valorant — it's also marketing.

The real question is whether fan-first team selection actually builds long-term competitive health or just creates a league of popular brands fielding whatever roster they can afford. History suggests it trends toward the latter, but maybe Pacific breaks the pattern. Hard to say.

The Ranked Player's Takeaway

You might be reading this thinking "cool esports politics, how does this affect my climb?" Fair question. The honest answer is that the health of the pro scene trickles down to your experience more than you think. When the competitive pipeline rewards brand over skill, it changes how talent gets developed. Fewer opportunities for raw mechanical players to get noticed means fewer new pros pushing the meta forward, which means the strategies and agent innovations that eventually filter down to your ranked games slow down.

Also, real talk — if you're grinding ranked right now and the thing holding you back isn't your aim but the teammate diff every other game, I get it. The solo queue experience in Valorant is still a coinflip simulator half the time. If the climb is making you mental boom and you just want to hit the rank your mechanics actually deserve, a Valorant boost exists for exactly that reason. Skip the franchise application process for your own rank, basically.

The Prediction

The next round of VCT Pacific partner announcements will include at least one team that made it primarily on brand strength despite a mediocre competitive record, and at least one genuinely strong team will get passed over because their fanbase was too small. Riot will call it "building a sustainable ecosystem." The grinders who didn't make the cut will call it something else.

And in three years, when one of those brand-first teams is stuck in last place and bleeding fans because losing isn't great for engagement metrics either, we'll have this exact same conversation again. The franchise model doesn't learn. It just rebrands.