Valorant Genesis Cups could help to discover new talent

A new series of tournaments is coming to Spain and will look to find the “future stars” of Valorant. Could these smaller scale events be hosted globally in order to give lesser known players a chance to break through?

LVP is one of the world’s largest video gaming competition operators, running both national and international tournaments across multiple esports titles.

The Genesis Cups are a set of five individual Valorant events, taking place between October and December this year. LVP have the backing of Riot Games, and the Cups will be sponsored by Philips OneBlade and Domino’s.

Each tournament will feature eight teams. Six of these will be invited by the hosts, including some of the best rosters in the country, the other two spots will be filled by squads from a selection of open qualifiers.

The total prize pool of the Genesis Cups amounts to €20,000 ($23k USD), and the individual finals will be broadcast live on Twitch starting October 7.  Registration details for the qualifiers can be found on the official ArenaGG page here.

Whilst this specific series may not be of too much interest to Valorant fans outside of Spain and Europe, it would be good to see the concept continue to be applied elsewhere.

Riot recently revealed the First Strike tournament as the next step for Valorant esports following the success of the Ignition Series. They explained that this event would also make use of merit-based qualifiers in the earlier stages.

As exciting as this is, there will likely not be too many spots up for grabs. Smaller competitions operating on a national or even state level could open the door for undiscovered talent to get their name out there. It may be that someone has huge potential but has not yet found the right teammates to succeed, these sorts of cups could help them network and prove their skill.

Valorant is still incredibly young and by making it as accessible as possible we can build a scene which truly rewards talent and leaves room for new players to climb to the top.