Wikipedia - Team SoloMid

Team SoloMid, commonly referred to by its abbreviation TSM, is a professional esports organization based in the United States. It was founded in September 2009 by Andy "Reginald" Dinh. TSM currently fields players in Apex Legends, Dota 2, Fortnite, Rocket League, Guilty Gear Strive, Super Smash Bros., Valorant, and Counter-Strike 2. The organization also briefly owned an Overwatch team.

TSM's League of Legends team won seven of the total sixteen splits of North America's League of Legends Championship Series (LCS).

History

Founder Andy "Reginald" Dinh

Before entering esports, the origin of Team SoloMid (TSM) traces back to September 2009, when Andy "Reginald" Dinh and his brother Dan Dinh created a blog, which became SoloMid.net, during their college years providing written guides for the game League of Legends. The Dinh brothers were both part of a League of Legends clan called All or Nothing during the game's beta testing, which later rebranded to SoloMid. A small group of players that represented the SoloMid.net community would become the original TSM team: SaintVicious, Chaox, TheOddOne, Locodoco, and Reginald. Team SoloMid was officially created in January 2011. Later that year, Riot Games launched the first season of what would become the League Championship Series. By then, both SaintVicious and Locodoco had left the team, and TheRainMan and Xpecial had replaced them to complete TSM's roster of the first season. The same year, Jack Etienne had become the general manager for the team.

In 2013, Reginald left the team to run the TSM business full time.

In 2014, TSM expanded into Hearthstone esports by signing MaSsan, Trump, and Kripparrian. The organization expanded into two more esports titles in 2015, acquiring the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) roster of Team Dignitas and its first Super Smash Bros. player, Leffen. TSM found success across multiple titles that year. Their League of Legends team won the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship for the first time, and their CS:GO division won multiple international tournaments as well. However, despite their successes, TSM dropped their CS:GO team completely by the end of the year.

In March 2016, they established their Vainglory division after acquiring the team Alliance. Later that year, in late July, Team SoloMid signed an Overwatch team. However, two weeks later, it dropped the team after allegations arose in regards to some of its players cheating in CS:GO. In September 2016, TSM, along with six other North American esports organizations, established the Professional Esports Association (PEA), a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league.

In May 2017, TSM had also established a division in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

On June 16, 2019, TSM acquired the former roster of the Rainbow Six: Siege Pro League team Excelerate Gaming along with popular streamer, Jason "Beaulo" Doty. They started competition in the Pro League in Season 10 the same day.

By July 2020, TSM had teams competing across 10 games. They also fielded two simultaneous rosters in three of them: Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The first roster was one that competes in tournaments to win, while the second one that was more akin to typical streamers that typically creates collaborative content within a shared gaming house.

On May 22, 2020, TSM announced their move into the Valorant scene, with their first official roster consisting of Hazed, Drone, Wardell, Cutler, and Subroza. According to Subroza, the transition for most players on the team was easy coming from a CSGO background.

On August 27, 2020, TSM announced their signing of chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Nakamura is the second chess player to be sponsored by an esports organization.

In December 2020, Team SoloMid was worth $410 million. The same month the revenue of Team SoloMid was estimated $45 million.

On June 4, 2021, TSM announced a 10-year $210 million naming rights deal with Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX, officially changing their name to Team SoloMid FTX. Also in June 2021, Erik Marino, co-founder of the brand Rocksmith, joined TSM as vice president of apparel.

On January 26, 2022, TSM announced on their Twitter page that they will acquire Team Undying's roster and will venture into the DotA 2 scene. Team Undying consisted of Timado, Bryle, SabeRLight-, MoonMeander and DuBu, and currently competing in the NA region. They won the Dota Pro Circuit NA 2021/2022 Tour 1 Regional finals against Evil Geniuses.

In late 2021, several employees and players of TSM publicly accused Reginald of workplace bullying, including verbal abuse; similar accusations had arisen as early as 2011. TSM and Riot Games, the game developer of League of Legends, both launched their own investigations into the accusations as a result. Following the investigations, Riot Games found Dinh guilty of disparaging and bullying behavior and TSM was fined $75,000, with Dinh being ordered to complete sensitivity and executive training. TSM meanwhile found that their CEO had committed "no unlawful conduct".

On November 16, 2022, TSM announced they had dropped the "FTX" branding and ended their agreement with FTX early after FTX declared bankruptcy amid scandal.