Sean Gares, ShahZam, Relyks, SicK and Twistzz are certainly positioned to take advantage of all of the opportunities that 2017 will offer mediocre teams. The five CSGO pros have gone from TSM’s latest hope to rise up out from the mediocrity to the Miami Heat’s new CSGO squad that will be using their recently-acquired Misfits name in about a month.
According to the Kotaku report regarding the matter, it seems like the Miami Heat organization is going to have more than just a League of Legends team and random FGC sponsorships to dump money into, but, on top of what they have, they’ll have a new team that’s going to have regular opportunities to play games and leagues in what is the most active esports scene out of the three major titles. Realistically, this rounds out the portfolio of teams for the organization to immediately wield going forward in the year, but also allows them to begin reestablishing the Misfits name as something other than a low-tier organization that barely keeps afloat.
Along with the transfer of the TSM-for-a-minute squad to the Misfits organization, TSM lost its right to play in the ESL Pro League due to the league’s majority-roster rule.
So not only does Misfits have to be getting a roster at some sort of premium, but they’re going to have brand awareness for their name in the best online league for the game straight out of the gate? How is this anything short of a massive victory for the account manager involved in this entire deal?
I mean, they’re seriously getting on the money dispensing train and committing to it.
Of course, CS:GO is not the only game in the Misfits’ portfolio. They’re active in five other games:
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Their League of Legends squad, which just clinched a slot in the European LCS, wasted zero time in the off-season and added some reasonably strong free agents from EU and KR: PowerofEvil and KaKAO. They join Alphari, Hans and IgNar to round out the starting roster with Lamabear and Yuuki60 on the bench.
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The Misfits’ Overwatch roster is based on an earlier acquisition of Graviton Surge made by the team before Heat ownership, from which Nevix and Zebbosai are the two remaining players from that transaction. During December, the organization made headlines for participating in a three-way player swap with Rogue and Luminosity. They round out the Misfits roster with a pile of Swedes: Manneten, Zave, TviQ and Reinforce.
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Misfits even have a team playing the best Dota-clone that isn’t Dota 2! Their Heroes of the Storm team is still the old mYinsanity team the organization picked up this past summer. Captain Blumbi leads the team including StarCraft 2 veteran HasuObs along with Darkmok, Nurok and Splendour, the only non-German on the roster.
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Misfits’ sole FGC sponsored played is a Smash Melee player called The Moon. The Moon’s Marth is certainly top-tier and has maintained a top-30 status in the SSBM Ranking Series for the past two years. He’s currently ranked 21st in the world. His best finish from last year was a $1250 purse from Shots Fired 2, where he finished runner up to Mew2King.
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To round out the Misfits’ other holdings, the brand has recently signed a trio of RNGstone players from the EU scene: Georgec from the UK, and Pokrovac and StanCifka from the Czech Republic. Georegc and Pokrovac are both 2016 standouts, with multiple podium finishes in the European circuit of events, but StanCifka, on the other hand, has won multiple major tournaments in 2015 and has not regularly competed in 2016.