Unified: A Surge of New Titles

TéJaun RíChard 5/23/2021

What’s up everyone?

It’s me, back at it again. While this may be the same face you know and love, we’ve had quite the makeover recently in terms of the company.

To put it succinctly: we unified.

Now you might wonder what that means and all, but I figure I’ll leave that to another day when I can talk more about the bells and whistles of that. For now, I want to talk to you a bit about some of the exciting developments in regards to the household tournament that has delivered exciting storylines, fantastic gameplay, and introductions to some of the up-and-coming greats in regards to League of Legends: the Upsurge Premier Tournament.

Firstly, because we unified, it’s now called Unified Premier. Thought I’d get that out of the way.

Secondly, it’s expanding. Well, it has been expanding, but now it’s getting even better.

I had the pleasure of talking to Justin “Jaytuu” Ford, Social Media Manager here at Unified. Initially joining in October 2020, he immediately hit the ground running, paving the way as the company started tackling the task of broadening out into different games, as he felt that Unified already had a strong League of Legends presence - but that was really it. Talking to him helped me learn a bit about how the current lineup of games has been affected and expanded so far.

Allow me to share with you some of his insight and give you a paraphrased rundown of what’s happened so far.

Rainbow Six: Siege (R6S)

Rainbow Six is no stranger to the Unified lineup, and the tournaments went largely well during the past winter season where we saw Arial Arise take home first place out of twelve teams competing for placements and a piece of a $2,000 prize pool. It has always had a decent following, but Jay wanted to take things a step further.

So, for the first time in Unified history, we had an open qualifier in order to start off the Spring ‘21 Premier League.

...and the turnout was huge.

Imagine this: 41 teams. 12 spots. All of the Rainbow Six: Siege you can watch.

Jay noted that for him, the coolest part of participating in the R6S community has been the growth of the tournaments and influence Unified has in general. With Unified Premier being increasingly recognized among teams, players, and organizations as a premier place to be, the game started to get more attention, and broadcasts were moved from the supplementary channel to the primary Unified stream. In addition to this, He also credited the growth to the players, who he considers to more closely identify with and regularly promote their brands than in other popular esports titles (as opposed to in other games where it’s often the other way around), which gets people more excited about teams in general that they can rally behind as opposed to a particular player.

Nevertheless, the growth has been impressive.

Rocket League

This past season in Jay’s opinion was not very competitive or fun to watch, with three teams “, clearly dominating the top of each bracket” and everyone else “essentially competing for fourth place. This season has seen more growth in terms of both viewership and competitiveness in his eyes, with the “high gap being a lot closer”. While this may not speak much towards the actual game itself, it does show that the quality of players signing up for the tournament is getting better and better.

With more eyes on the players in terms of viewership and social media, Jay predicts solid growth for the Unified Rocket League Premier League.

The ongoing season has playoffs coming right around the corner, lasting from May 31st, 2021 to June 7th, 2021. The last matches of the regular season will take place tomorrow, May, 24th, 2021 in order to determine just which teams of the original 16 will make it.

Following in the footsteps of R6S and the recent success of Unified’s endeavors there, Rocket League will also have an open qualifier tournament for the upcoming season.

Stay tuned.

Valorant

Valorant is still fairly new in terms of Unified (and competitive play in general), so like many other organizations, Unified is still working to get a handle on this scene. With players and teams becoming more active on social media, the game is getting more and more attention and Unified is looking to capitalize on the need for a dedicated place where amateur players looking to make a name for themselves can show up and show out, all while you get to watch the showdown.

Future Plans

It’s really cool so far how Unified Premier, despite historically being popular for League of Legends, has managed to aggressively expand into some of the other popular titles with relative ease and success.

What games would you like to see added to the Premier lineup? Jay said that if it were up to him entirely, he’d be eyeing either Apex Legends or League of Legends: Wild Rift, as he thinks those games have a good competitive community and people would be willing to watch those. He also noted though that it’s really cool how almost any game with multiplayer can have an esports fanbase, citing games like Among Us and even Farming Simulator.

“It’s just something you’d have to see for yourself”, he closed with.

Well, there you have it.

The Premier leagues are back and better than ever!

So as we part ways with the old, refine on the present, and look forward to the future, we hope you enjoy, spectate, and participate in the surge of titles expanding in the Unified Premier lineup.

For more information on R6S and Rocket League upcoming open qualifiers, feel free to click here. and/or follow the official Unified Premier Twitter Page, here.