IN A Youtube video posted in their new Talon Philippines channel, Talon Esports CEO Sean Zhang reveals that the Philippines will be the base for the esports organization's expansion into Southeast Asia.
“The reason why we chose the Philippines is to develop our next stage of our growth throughout the Asia Pacific region,” he said.
“Our object at Talon has always been about building a platform to allow players from the APAC region to be showcased around the world… and build a platform that allows them to become better players and grow with us over this journey in hopefully becoming the most dominant esports team within this Asia-Pacific region."
Talon launched Dota 2, Valorant teams
Talon has made waves since last year after announcing that they will be entering the Dota 2 pro scene. The team put together what was a super team during the first DPC Tour of the season, but had to make a quick rebuild in Tour II after losing carry Kim "Gabbi" Villafuerte Santos and Israeli captain Tal "Fly" Aizik during the off-season.
The team brought in Thai carry Nuengnara "23savage" Teeramahanon and support Worawit "Q" Mekchai just before Tour II. It was this iteration of the team that found immediate success, securing them a Division I spot in time for the final tour of the season.
Just last March 2, Talon further solidified their presence in the country, announcing that they’ll be forming a Valorant roster for the VCT Philippine Challenger series.
They formally announced the squad’s initial three players last April 21 bringing in Pinoys GabbyDiz, gnaru, and markL. The squad rounded out their roster announcement last April 23 with Drei, also from the Philippines, as well as players from Korea, Alex and UdoTan. It was also announced that Creative, who coached Korean team Prince, would be coming in as the team’s coach.
“(Valorant) is a title that we did a lot of analysis in the region to understand which market to we really wanted to focus on. But having done our research we found that the Philippines is once again the most interesting market in regards to talent for this game,” explained Zhang.
Zhang also desccribed the depth of the player and talent pool within the Philippines and the SEA region wsa the key reason they chose to build a Valorant squad in the Philippines.
”The passion and love for the game is incredibly strong and a very strong community. So with that we are really excited about leveraging the Talon mindset and our expertise in FPS. We have won a lot of titles in Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch, and to bring that expertise and process and mindset to Valorant SEA and hopefully give the players and coaching staff that we do hire a platform to level up and continuously dominate SEA, but also challenging some of the major regions. We already seen that last year in Champions and we wanted to build on that.”
Lastly, Zhang has announced that they are also committed to building their back-end infrastructure in the country, which includes offices and gaming houses. They have committed millions of dollars in hopes to strengthen their two squads in hopes of representing the SEA region on the global stage.
Recently, the squad has announced a partnership with online betting platform M88 Mansion. With the deal, M88 Mansion will be Talon’s main title sponsor for their Dota 2 squad.
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