Team Liquid
Team Liquid is a multi-regional professional esports organization based in the Netherlands that was founded in 2000. With the release of , Team Liquid signed their first professional players.
In 2012, Team Liquid acquired a North American Dota 2 team, marking their first venture into multi-genre management. 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. Their European Dota 2 squad won The International 2017, which had one of the largest prize pool for any esports tournament in history. Team Liquid's League of Legends team has won four LCS titles, and their Counter-Strike Global Offensive team was awarded the Intel Grand Slam prize in 2019, a feat achieved in just four tournaments.
History
The website was released on May 1, 2001 by Victor "Nazgul" Goossens and Joy "Meat" Hoogeveen under the domain teamliquid.cjb.net. On September 22, 2002, the website was moved to the address of teamliquid.net. A day later the very first poll was posted as a vote for the website's name with the teamliquid.net name winning over other suggestions such as likwit.com. On April 5, 2019 it was announced that the website would be moving to the domain tl.net, with teamliquid.net becoming an alias for teamliquid.com in the future.Although Team Liquid was primarily known as 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 covering Dota 2 news. On December 8, 2012, Liquid expanded their esports franchise into multiple games for the first time, with the recruitment of a North American Dota 2 team.
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.
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, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, and AOL co-founder Steve Case.
On December 16, 2017, Team Liquid disbanded their Halo roster.
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. The chief executive officer is Bruce Stein, the former chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Mattel Toys, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Kenner Products. On September 27, 2016, aXiomatic announced that it had acquired controlling interest of esports organization Team Liquid.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, and former NFL player Dhani Jones.
It was announced that Victor Goossens and Steve Arhancet would continue their roles as co-CEOs of Team Liquid after the acquisition.
Websites
Main websites
- TLnet – Originally branded as "Team Liquid", the tl.net 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, TLnet 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.
- Team Liquid – Website focusing on Team Liquid esports team coverage.
- Liquipedia – Is a volunteer-run wiki covering various esports, beginning with and currently covering more than 35 unique titles.
Tournaments and events
Team Liquid Starleague
The two iterations of the TeamLiquid Starleague have been the largest StarCraft: Brood War tournaments outside of South Korea. 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. The tournament took place between March and May 2011. On April 25, 2012, a fourth installment was announced.
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.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 mode that is played best of 7 games.
- 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
History
The gaming clan "Liquid" was founded by Victor "Nazgul" Goossens near the end of 2000, after he decided 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 were handpicked by Goossens based on both personality and talent.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, 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.
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.
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. On September 28, 2015, Team Liquid announced that KoreanDJ resigned from the organization and retired from competitive Smash, citing persistent hand and wrist pains.
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. 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 team that previously played under the title "Denial eSports".
On January 24, 2015, it was announced that HTC had become an official sponsor of Team Liquid.
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. 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.
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.
Management
Victor "Nazgul" Goossens is a founding member, now co-owner and chief executive officer 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 chief executive officer and primarily manages the League of Legends team.