I’ll be honest. I am a little proud of myself that it ONLY took 7 months of these before I was a little delayed on one. Sorry about that.

I am exiting post-Retirement-Home-hibernation. June was a little bit of a silly month for us over in LA-TL land; as we not only (excitedly) found ourselves qualifying into the LCS Finals in Arizona, we also put on Doublelift’s Retirement Home tournament. And I wanna talk about the latter a bit.

When entering into our agreement with Doublelift to come back to TL, one of the most exciting opportunities on the table was the chance to help produce and host Retirement Home. DL and co were convinced that they could get 20 players together for a really fun, nostalgic, and scuffed weekend adventure on the rift. They just needed some funding, and a production partner. We got to be the production partner, Alienware got to be the funding.

Now a lot of the production staff has experience with live broadcast. We’ve worked on race. We’ve done live stream events. We’ve broadcast online tournaments. But we have never turned the full office into an esports event studio.

It wasn’t perfect. On the second day, our (wired) video ingest was failing. The stream was dropping frames during gameplay, which is the biggest sin imaginable to an esports event. Mid broadcast we had to troubleshoot our broadcast PC. Restart the broadcast PC. Re-seat the capture card. Lose a camera. Switch the gameplay to an NDI feed. We didn’t think we needed a contingency plan, and we were (a lil) wrong there.

Luckily most people didn’t notice the fire going on in the background when DL stopped down to IRL stream in the middle of the technical issue. Fitting for the feel of “old school esports” but not vibe for the staff putting out fires. We got the stream back. We had to re-sync some audio. But by the end of the day people (mostly?) forgot.

The positive feedback on reddit and other places made us all feel quite warm. We took a little shot on something big, and through the help of our partners, it worked out quite well. So to DL, Lena, Mythic, Jatt, Riv, Phreak, and a slue of internal and external production friends- thanks!

We’re exicted to do something similar again. With less downtime. But the team needed a break after the event; hence the wee little delay in this update. So what else is going down?

The TL;DR tl;dr

A lot of Silver Medals

• 🥈 LCS Finished 2nd to Lyon

• 🥈 Valorant Game Changers Finished 2nd to MiBR

• 🥈 Cure finished 2nd to herO at GSL Season 2

• 🥈 HBox finished 2nd to Zain at Battle of BC

Forgive me as I may mix a bit of July into this recap. I am writing from a Friday afternoon on the 10th.

League of Legends: I had the pleasure of attending the LCS finals in AZ and selling jerseys to the fans in attendance. It was so fun to see so many TL fans and help make the audience more blue. I really, truly, thought that this team was going to win the whole thing after they spanked C9. Then Sunday came. An MSI Birth (Which was undefeated (if you don’t count the T1 games)) was a nice consolation prize, but the trophy would have been nicer.

CS2: I was confused about the new sticker system. I was sad at our Stage 1, match 5, exit. I was grumpy to see Falcons win the whole thing.

DoTA: Blast Slam 7 saw the team exiting in 5-6th place after a loss to LGD (the new Peruvian LGD) in the lower bracket. Feels like the top 8 teams in dota are all really, really close in skill right now which is making these events exciting if stressful.

Valorant: Game Changers saw a disappointing, yet still exciting, participation in Challengers Stage 2. They ended the bottom of their group with a 0-6 score. The team will have to play in the relegation series. Their time in Game Changers was more fruitful, but ultimately a little sour grapes, as they finished the season in 2nd place.

R6: It’s group stage again, and the team has clutched a playoff birth. 6 Teams enter playoffs (5 and 6 seed in the lower bracket) - and top 4 will get an EWC spot; so this one do be important.

PubG: Cricut 2, Series Final, concluded with the team in a 22 place. Which is either 2 second places, a typo, or a result one may consider poor.

Crossfire: The team finished the regular season 7-0 in their group, and have not moved onto the second group stage with an active 8-1 map record. They’re looking for a birth into the playoff upper bracket where they need just a few more wins in order to clinch their EWC seat.

MLBB: Team Liquid ID finished MPL Season 17 in 4th place. Because 4 is > 2; they did not get a seat at the MSC (EWC) table. So that means TL PH will be the only MLBB roster competing for TL in Paris this month.

SC2: A bunch of little 1st place wins for Clem @ WardiTV Mondays #90. And #91. And at the Monday Night Weekly 55. And the Kung Fu Cup Weekly 12. And the Wardi TV Spring Championship.

Smash Bros: At Battle of BC 8, HungryBox got 2nd. After losing to Joshman’s Fox in uppers, Juan came back in lowers for revenge. He did ultimately fall to Zain in the finals.

Apex: A 6th place finish in ALGS Americas. Into a really, really good looking EWC Group stage. Fingers crossed.

Chess: Pragg won checks notes the Norway Chess 2026 event. Which feels criminal for Magnus to lose an event in… Norway?! But huge kudos to Pragg for this first place. Magnus did spent time in June winning the ASEAN Esports Chess Cup. So congrats to Mr. Carlsen too.

It is firmly EWC time. For the third year in a row I am going to keep the Liquipedia tab open to frantically track every team’s points. Now, I know I am a bit more interested in the club championships than most because the final placement of the team does have a real financial variable to the business. The difference between 1st, 2nd, and 5th does matter. It feels like fun to compete against others across both a myriad of games, and media.

I do not wish to wash away the problematic parts of EWC. There are, many. But I am curious how some of y’all feel about the club championships. As always, I would love to discuss this newsletter on /r/teamliquid - or you can email me at [email protected]

6 Months down and 6 Months to go in this little project.