Some of you may have heard rumours of sorts already (it was never really a big secret); our staff has been discussing the future of TC, and some relatively big changes are to be made in the near future..

The future of TC

First of all, we have defined some general goals for TC:

1. We want to be able to promote and support eSports
2. We would like to do so by sponsoring teams to participate in online as well as offline (LAN) tournaments
3. We will aim to become a profitable* eSports organisation

These are long term goals – obviously we cannot suddenly become profitable overnight. Do note that, when we say “profitable”, it doesn’t mean we want to make a lot of money – it means we want to be able to continuously support eSports. This could mean as much as being able to sponsor a team to enter a pay-to-play tournament, or, in the future, send a team to LAN. If our turnover is 50 cents per year, then that’s totally fine. In fact, that’s perfect, as it means we are spending as much as we can.

The vicious circle

There is one little problem challenge when it comes to supporting teams like this: To become a profitable org, we must have income To generate income, our team(s) must: win tournaments with prize money, or gain a sponsor-worthy amount of exposure To win tournaments teams must sign up for (pay-to-play) tournaments To be able to keep sending teams into such tournaments, we must be profitable

The exposure thing is a different story entirely. If teams are proactive within the community (and outside it) by providing content (youtube, streams, ..), and manage to attract a lot of viewers by doing so, this could potentially be interesting for sponsors who want their name exposed. This is definitely something we can (and plan to) work towards, but for now, and considering the context in which we operate (TF2), this is all relatively insignificant.

To break this vicious circle, there is only one thing we can do: Inject money.

Flagship team

To represent TC as a professional eSports organisation within TF2, our flagship team, Reditio, shall be renamed “Team Colonslash”, and their avatars will change to a team logo (more on this below). Don’t worry, we have no plans to ditch our community teams (or their customised avatars)!

Redesign

We’re currently preparing a redesign in conjunction with a very talented designer – my sister. Should you be interested, you can view her portfolio here: http://silvyrusch.nl/.

We’re going for a completely new website, and quite possibly a new logo to go with it. Depending on the style of the new logo, our avatars may undergo a change as well.

What and when

To wrap up, here are the goals we have set ourselves:

Short term
Stuff we are doing in the near future (before the end of 2013, where possible)

• New website/logo/avatars
• Different avatar style for flagship team (team avatar for each player)
• Flagship team renaming to “Team Colonslash”, tagged “TC”
• Community teams keep their names as they are. Avatars may change, but continue to be customised per player

Long term
These are the goals we are aiming for, but some may take as long as 2 or 3 years to achieve:

• Actively search for sponsors (need good results/exposure first!)
• Expanding to different scenes (picking up a Dota 2 team for example)
• Player contracts

ESA

http://esagamer.com/ – a new tournament website, hosting tournaments for a range of games, including TF2. They will be hosting pay-to-win and subscription based cups.

Step one in our efforts to reach the aforementioned goals will be to sponsor Reditio to enter at least one such cup, and set up an agreement with them to see what happens to any potential prize money. More on that at a later date.

The End

As always, if you have any questions/comments/criticisms, feel free to contact me on Mumble or Steam, or just leave a comment below!