Thank you so much for joining us.
I’m Jake Sin, I’m the Head of VALORANT Esports in APAC.
I’ve been at Riot Games since 2014 and I started at Riot working on League of Legends Esports.
I’ve worked at Riot since then for three years.
But now I’m focused on VALORANT as it has gotten super important and the growth has been phenomenal.
So yeah, focusing on VALORANT and then working across APAC since 2022.
It was really a small number of people working on all of these games at the same time.
That organisational upgrade has been super, super helpful and another change for us is for VALORANT.
In League still, we don’t say APAC, but in VALORANT we do.
That way, we can save resources and we can do more with less.
In VALORANT, we have this new APAC layer now and I was basically the first APAC esports person.
That’s been a big challenge, but I think we’re off to a pretty good start.
Yeah, I think VALORANT has been an awesome introduction to the esports industry for APAC.
You have games that are popular in the West, but not available in Asia.
You have games that are popular in some Asian countries, but not in the West.
We have agents from all across the globe and we embrace a lot of these local cultures and languages.
We even put out marketing materials that are in foreign languages.
VALORANT esports has been very successful in multiple markets and that’s also rare to see.
You have very good teams and players coming from everywhere, basically.
And when there’s an inter-regional matchup, it’s very obvious which region is going to win.
But in VALORANT, it’s very unpredictable.
Every region can take it and that’s what we love to see.
It’s diversity, it’s balance.
And that’s why I think the balance has been great for APAC.
It’s allowed these underserved markets from previous other games to really shine and take center stage.
And that was just not possible in other esports.
And that was with the stand-in, so I think that’s amazing to see.
By the way, we saw so much interest when we did the team partnership program process.
So that was the idea behind that.
For the time being, I don’t see things changing drastically.
We will continue to get teams from Challengers to get promoted through Ascension.
We were trying to see the competitive strength of the regions.
What we’re discovering is there are no clear underdogs, there’s no clear top dogs.
It feels very balanced and every region is very strong.
That’s right, that’s right.
So we’re going to keep that spirit alive.
So it’s always about the fans of Riot and we want to go where the fans are.
We kind of ruled out Seoul from the beginning because we already have the Pacific League there.
But we wanted to take on that challenge of serving the fans.
So we looked at places outside of Seoul and like I said, we are focusing on the fans.
Oh, by the way, Japan also had Masters this year so we also ruled that out.
If you look at viewership, it’s the highest.
If you look at the player base to like esports viewers ratio, it’s also the highest.
You have the highest percentage of players actually tuning in to watch.
And yeah, I mean, you have a big following for these VALORANT creators as well from Thailand.
I think Nattawat “SuperBusS” Yoosawat is huge here, you know.
So yeah, we wanted to prioritise Thailand.
Clearly, the response has been pretty overwhelming.
I’ve seen the lines even hours before the doors open.
And the lines stretch from the entrance to the very end of the mall.
How does that make you feel seeing people show up in droves just to watch such Ascension Pacific?
I mean, you know, overwhelmingly thankful and really, really touching.
It’s the most rewarding part of my job, personally.
And what I really love seeing is that people seem to love VALORANT.
And we don’t have a Thai team represented in the playoffs.
And they showed really strong support for these teams.
The fans here are amazing and they seem to be very respectful and very passionate about VALORANT.
There’s like a sense of community as well amongst the fans and that’s part of being global.
We’re all united by our love of VALORANT and VALORANT esports and our teams and players.
So yeah, it’s awesome that the Thai fans are cheering for non-Thai players and everyone.
Okay, this will be my last question.
I just have to ask, are there any plans in the near future for the Pacific League?
I can’t promise when because I think there’s a lot of pre-conditions attached to that.
And you might’t just be like, “Oh, this seems cool.
Let’s throw money at that and do it and not worry about the consequences.”
But yes, it is our dream to be able to go to meet our fans outside of Seoul.
I think we’d love to come back to Thailand.
We’d also love to go to Japan.
I think there’s a lot of markets that we would love to go to.
And at least we have Ascension and Masters and Champions that will be touring around the world.
Yeah, we just want to meet the fans everywhere.
