As the VALORANT Champions Tour’s annual off-season period begins, so does the chaos of teams releasing, transferring, and signing players. This time, it looks like one of the biggest names in the game has secured his team for 2024.
American organization Sentinels seems to have released one of the strangest roster announcements so far this year, confirming that their star player Tyson “TenZ” Ngo will be around for another VCT season according to a Sept. 8 tweet from the org.
TenZ was originally confirmed to have only signed a contract with Sentinels through the end of the 2023 season, unlike the bulk of the roster’s core who are signed on for a further 12 months.
The supposed announcement video features Sentinels content creator Tarik “tarik” Çelik pitching a business idea to an edited panel of judges from “Shark Tank.” The edited clips show the judges rejecting tarik’s business proposal—seemingly for the Sentinels org as a whole—until he brings out TenZ.
Once TenZ waves to the judges, the reception shifts from clips of them swearing and downplaying tarik’s original business idea to an incredibly positive flow of comments regarding TenZ. The judges quickly backtracked, accepting tarik’s pitch and investing in Sentinels, or rather, investing in TenZ.
Nothing about the video itself seems to confirm TenZ’s contract for 2024, aside from the tweet’s text, which tells us “he’s here to stay.” Nevertheless, the tweet’s replies and the VALORANT Competitive community seem to be taking the announcement as confirmation.
The video skit as a whole seems to poke fun at the recent news of the Sentinels organization’s financial struggles in the last year, but also recognizes that TenZ might be one of their most valuable assets. The duelist is known as one of the most mechanically skilled players in all of VALORANT and remains a top name in the scene despite Sentinels’ disappointing 2023 VCT season.
The last international appearance for the fan-favorite North American squad was all the way back in January at the opening LOCK//IN tournament in São Paulo, Brazil. The team failed to qualify for both Masters Tokyo and Champions in Los Angeles, though TenZ did attend the finals in the audience, and even made an appearance on broadcast.
There have not been any other roster moves out of the Sentinels camp yet, though another notable rostered player—Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen, who was signed mid-season originally as a replacement—also has his contract expiring this year.
As the off-season progresses, many VCT teams both in the U.S. and abroad will be reworking their lineups and making roster changes ahead of the new season’s launch, which is set to begin February 2024.
