Sounds really nice, hopefully this can happen. But how? :thinking:

ive never heard of this league, does anyone actually play in it?

Potentially large if truthful

Compared to the other major leagues this one is rather new and targeted for an NA audience without entry fees. Like a better UGC.

Hey. So, just wanted to confirm some things about the travel stuff.

There will be a maximum of 12 teams competing in S Rank, and all of them will be given free travel to the event. However, hotel reservations and other stuff once the players are here will not be covered. This is also restricted to North American teams and players, so if you roster someone from EU, they won't be covered.

A Rank (one below S) will also have discounted travel, though the exact discount hasn't been decided yet.

Here's a basic roadmap for TFCL.
https://tfcleague.com/2017/11/21/future-tfcl-roadmap-2018-beyond/

The goal is to try and entice esport organizations to join into competitive TF2, with the hopes that their power and status in the esport world can help to grow and legitimize TF2's scene.

Any limitations on the travel? Not improbable that a team with some Euro players could be around. Would you pay for travel for someone from say Russia?

Got ninja'd by a minute due to being on a phone, rip

Like what others have said, no; travel won't be covered if you live outside of North America. Of course exceptions might be made for some of the top EU teams if they wanted to attend, but I definitely won't be making a habit of it.

Free divisions, one with prize pool, paid ones with way lower fees than ESEA per player and better prize pools on the other end.. Alternative gamemodes that are free and also include decent prize pools, covered flights, server renting and pug systems.. Is this a dream or is TF2 actually becoming esport now?

everyone always hypothesizes about some sort of millionaire benefactor with a love of tf2 that will swoop down from the heavens and save the scene. i think tfcl is it

Hmmmmmm.....

How can you possibly provide free travel for everyone? Even travelling within the states or Canada that's like 12x6x200 absolute minimum
Also it says the LAN will be held every year in November, I assume this means the first one will be a year from now?

If it does end up happening this could be big but tbh I'm getting flashbacks to cevo and am kinda skeptical atm, could just end up dividing the playerbase even more and flopping

i know i'm not sid but i've heard that he does have a good amount of money in reserve for events like this from sponsors as well as his own personal funds. all just word of mouth though, take it as you wish

We're going to be hosting three seasons per year, with the fall/winter season happening at the same time as the lan.
The goal is to cover pretty much all expenses with whatever's left over from A Rank. Assuming 24 teams sign up for A Rank, that's around a $1,000 profit to the league, with $1,000 being reserved for the A Rank pool, so a total of $2,000. The remaining $1,000 is then cycled around to cover whatever we need to cover, such as travel, or a bigger S Rank pool.

S Rank teams are also filtered so they're playing where they belong. It shouldn't be possible for a team to simply sign up for the ability to attend a lan on the cheap, as these teams should be somewhat well respected in their own right, and worked hard to get to the top. Only teams from ESEA Invite will be added to S Rank without any prior season experience in TFCL, as they've proven that they can play at that level, and are all pretty serious about the game.

So yeah, mostly this stuff is funded by a fund reserve paid for by A Rank participants. I also have an investor in case of emergencies where extra funding is needed.

money.org

While this would be insane if true, I’d really like to see how this would be managed before getting excited for it. Just seems way too good to be true. (big prizepool, annual lan, funding for top teams + some funding for some other teams is a LOT of money)

EDIT: I feel like a lot more than $1,000 (or even $3,000, considering 3 seasons/year) will be needed to fund several teams’ plane tickets to LAN.

Yeah, more is definitely needed. It should come out to around $1200 per team. I don't expect all 12 teams to attend every single lan, especially since only the plane ticket itself would be covered. The idea is to make it easier for them to attend, not guarantee that they will be able to. Players would still need to pay for their own expenses once they're actually here, with the biggest likely being hotel fees. Not everyone can afford that, even if the ticket itself was covered.

Also, this won't cover individual players, so John Smith can't join a team and get a free ticket to lan without his team actually showing up. On a similar note, a team must have 6 players able to attend, or else the entire thing will be void, and no one on their roster gets the travel benefits. It doesn't matter which six, so long as they're on the roster during lan signups. If the system is abused it could result in a ban from the league.

I should have worded the original announcement a tad better, so it didn't imply that literally every expense was paid for. There are policies and guidelines that apply to this, just like any other offer. Just because you're on an S Rank team doesn't mean you'll be able to attend the lan, just that your team has the chance to get free travel if they meet all qualifications, and can pay for any extra expenses.

Again, the intention is to make travel easier, not free.

giving every S rank team free lan travel is a good way to both make them come to your lan and discourage sandbagging (since in esea teams would rather stay in im or open rather than pay $80 or however much it is to get gaped for 7 weeks with no hope of making anything back

ofc it'd be nice if this is sustainable in any way...

Everyone's main concern should be further fracturing of the competitive scene. Unless you can consolidate every single paying player and team into your league, you will be doing more damage than good. It's the CEVO situation all over again, and Lange had way more credibility with that project than TFCL does and it still failed. It's not just a risk of weakening ESEA, but there is a very real risk of killing ESEA TF2 entirely. In the current state of ESEA, we need every single team we can get. We were so close to getting 3 divisions back so literally every single team counts. If even a small handful of teams decide to play TFCL over ESEA you've effectively killed the 3 division dream of ESEA, and also made it more likely that the entire league continues on a decline. Killing open means you kill invite, which instantly drops TF2 prizes by $14k per season. All that risk for a proposed $1k a season is a hard sell hence why I and others will remain skeptical.

Based on the information provided, here's a look at some numbers surrounding this project as it stands:
12 paying teams in A Rank would equate to the baseline prizing of $1,000.
25 teams would be needed to match ESEA-O's prizes at $2,250.
45 teams would be needed to meet the division's maximum prize ceiling of $4,000.
156 teams would be needed to match ESEA-I's prizes of $14,000.
181 teams would be needed to match ESEA's total prize pool of $16,250.
240 teams would be needed to cover the travel expenses of 12 Rank S teams to LAN (assuming $300 average travel cost, and no remaining revenue going to prizes whatsoever) at $21,600.
1200 teams would be needed to meet the S Rank division's maximum prize ceiling of $100,000.

Personally, I find TFCL meeting these numbers pretty far-fetched. Instead I think they should focus on building their league to replace UGC as the premier free league and then expand into paid divisions once they've established TFCL more. There is far less risk and damage done to the pro scene if they exclusively deal with the casual/free side of things.

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does your roadmap ever involve europe?

we don't have any paid leagues here so maybe the audience is easier

man today i had to upfrag a banny post shits going south

I'm not NA, but why should anyone support ESEA over any other league? In Europe, ETF2L works really well with four divisions (five last season), and it is because of this league was created by people who actually play this game, not by some organization that does not even have an idea what to do with it. Maybe TFCL is really a blessing for you there?

$

edit: worth noting that i can't see anything in b4nny's post that covers teams who could easily play both tfcl and esea. right now tfcl is more of a ugc silver skill level (i think), but i'm pretty sure most people who play tfcl are on at least one other team across ugc/rgl/esea. i'm planning to play tfcl for the first time this season, but i'll still play ugc. why would that stop me? many top invite players joined rgl for the prize pool, and put just a few hours of time into it every week.

ditch this weeb ranking system for actual divison names like Invite Main IM and Open instead of S A B and C

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What's even the point of this?