For esports organizations, crypto involvement is far from over. TSM. While the powerful esports player was dealing with the impact from FTX late last year, TSM is still looking ahead thanks to a new collaboration revealed on Tuesday.
The organization is collaborating with blockchain Avalanche on a new contract that will see the organization create its own Avalanche-based subnet and more. Let’s take a look at TSM’s fallout from the FTX merger, as well as the early information revealed in this new partnership with Avalanche.
Avalanche announced on Tuesday a competitive gaming relationship agreement spanning esports group Team SoloMid (TSM) and their gaming platform subsidiary, Blitz. TSM is one of the most established organizations in the game, having been in existence for a dozen years in a relatively new setting. TSM now competes in well-known games such as League of Legends, Apex Legends, Dota 2, R6S, Valorant, and others.
Avalanche will be the only blockchain partner for both properties under the new agreement, and Blitz will develop their own Avalanche Subnet.
TSM isn’t having her first dance with a crypto-endemic companion. The esports organization previously had a far more centralized partner in the now-defunct FTX, a contract that was forged in the thick of the bull market hysteria in mid-2021 and was the first of its type. Despite FTX’s demise and the ensuing controversy, it’s heartening to see the esports organization remain committed to the space.
With FTX, there has been a significant shift in partnerships and sponsorships in sports and entertainment transactions. Because of FTX’s extravagant spending, well-respected centralized exchanges have felt the heat (for reasons other than sports partnerships), and companies and talent have been more cautious in their crypto approach – and understandably so. As a consequence, things have been quite calm.
In the future, there is clearly a case to be made that the biggest chance for partnership partnerships in sports and entertainment rests in the builders and overseers of blockchains themselves, where transparency is normally much more abundant and bad actors are typically simpler to detect.
So far in 2023, GameFi has been a fascinating topic of debate in what has otherwise been a mediocre market pricing with some unusual narrative lines. Big gaming, entertainment, and art chains have been vying for turf, with Avalanche, Polygon, Solana, Cardano, and others carving out lanes in the creative sectors surrounding sport and entertainment.
