Riot Games’ import rules for VALORANT could lead Brazilian teams with full North American rosters or North American teams with all Brazilian players.
Riot recently announced the 10 teams for the Americas region, which is the apex of NA, Brazil, and Latin American teams. The regional competition will be hosted on LAN next year in Los Angeles. With the new Americas league also comes new import rules as the regions combine into one. According to the new ruleset put in place by Riot, the members of the larger region will be considered a part of that region and not an import.
“Participating Teams that compete in a global competition and to encourage the type of regional identification that is important to fans and sponsors, each Team must maintain, at all times during the Season, at least four team Members on its starting roster who are residents of a country in the applicable League Territory,” the VCT rules say. “The countries inside each of these geographic regions are a ‘League Territory’. For example, the United States and Brazil are part of the Americas League Territory and Germany and Nigeria are part of the EMEA League Territory.”
This means that any of the current teams in the Americas region, regardless of where the organization is from, can pick up any players that are available within the region. Players from NA, BR, and LATAM are all considered residents of the region and can be interchangeable on any of the 10 teams in the league.
Players that will be considered imports will be players who reside outside of the current region like EMEA or Pacific. Like Riot’s other title League of Legends, teams will only be allowed one import slot per roster. This means that one team cannot fill their rosters with players who are from a league that is not their own. An example of this would be Paper Rex from the Pacific region only signing players that are from North America or the Americas region.
