Team Liquid (Dutch: Team Vloeistof; Dutch pronunciation: [ˈtim ˈlɪkʋɪt]) is a professional esports organization based in the Netherlands that was founded in 2000. They signed their first professional players when the game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released.

In 2012, Team Liquid purchased a North American Dota 2 team, which was their first step into managing multiple types of games. In January 2015, Team Liquid officially combined with Team Curse under the Liquid name, adding Steve Arhancet, his staff, and former Curse teams from League of Legends, Street Fighter, and Super Smash Bros. Their European Dota 2 team won The International 2017, an esports tournament with the largest prize money in history. Team Liquid’s League of Legends team has won five LCS titles, and their Counter-Strike Global Offensive team earned the Intel Grand Slam prize in 2019 after winning four tournaments in 63 days. Team Liquid also has teams in Rainbow Six Siege, Free Fire, and Valorant in Brazil, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang teams in Indonesia and the Philippines, and chess grandmasters Fabiano Caruana, Magnus Carlsen, and R Praggnanandhaa who represent the organization.

History

The website was launched on May 1, 2001, by Victor "Nazgul" Goossens and Joy "Meat" Hoogeveen under the domain teamliquid.cjb.net. On September 22, 2002, the website moved to the address teamliquid.net. The next day, the first poll was posted to choose the website's name, and teamliquid.net was selected over other suggestions like likwit.com. On April 5, 2019, it was announced that the website would move to the domain tl.net, and teamliquid.net would later become an alias for teamliquid.com.

Although Team Liquid was mainly known as a StarCraft news site, the forums had sections for other games as well. On August 30, 2012, Team Liquid announced it would expand to cover news about Dota 2. On December 8, 2012, Team Liquid expanded its esports teams to include multiple games for the first time, by hiring a North American Dota 2 team.

On January 6, 2015, Steven "LiQuiD112" Arhancet joined Victor Goossens as co-owner of Team Liquid, starting the merge of former Team Curse Gaming under the Team Liquid name.

On September 27, 2016, Team Liquid sold its ownership to aXiomatic Gaming, a group that includes Peter Guber, co-owner of the Golden State Warriors; Ted Leonsis, an entrepreneur; Tony Robbins, a motivational speaker; Magic Johnson, a basketball Hall of Famer; and Steve Case, co-founder of AOL.

On December 16, 2017, Team Liquid ended its Halo team.

In 2020, the organization introduced Blue, a symbolic horse, as its mascot. Blue has appeared in the organization's marketing campaigns and partnerships.

Ownership

aXiomatic is a company that manages entertainment and sports businesses. Investors in the company include Peter Guber, Tony Robbins, Magic Johnson, Ted Leonsis, Steve Case, and Eric Lefkofsky. The chief executive officer is Bruce Stein, who previously worked as a chief executive officer and chief operating officer at Mattel Toys, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Kenner Products (Hasbro). On September 27, 2016, aXiomatic announced that it had bought majority ownership of the esports team Team Liquid.

Other investors include Lon Rosen and Tucker Kain from the Los Angeles Dodgers, Rick Welts and Kirk Lacob from the Golden State Warriors, Lerner Enterprises (owners of the Washington Nationals), Crane Kenney from the Chicago Cubs, Donn Davis (co-founder of Revolution and managing partner of Revolution Growth), Zach Leonsis (VP and general manager of Monumental Sports Network), Mark Ein (founder and owner of the Washington Kastles and Washington Justice), and Dhani Jones (former NFL player).

After the acquisition, Victor Goossens and Steve Arhancet continued to serve as co-CEOs of Team Liquid.

In December 2021, five players signed by Team Liquid became co-owners of the team. These players include Aerial Powers (a basketball player), Asa "Stimpy" Butterfield (a Super Smash Bros. player and actor), Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski (a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player), Juan "Hungrybox" DeBiedma (a Super Smash Bros. player), and Lex Veldhuis (a poker streamer and competitor).

In January 2022, Team Liquid signed the World of Warcraft guild Limit. This made Max "Maximum" Smith, the guild leader and team captain, a co-owner.

In May 2024, Team Liquid joined the Esports World Cup Foundation Club Support Program, which is supported by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. Later that same month, Team Liquid signed two Mobile Legends: Bang Bang rosters, AURA Esports and ECHO. These teams were renamed Liquid AURA and Liquid ECHO, and later became Team Liquid Indonesia and Team Liquid Philippines after aXiomatic acquired STUN.GG, which owned both teams.

On May 9, 2025, Team Liquid acquired the EA Sports FC organization Team Gullit, which was owned by Ruud Gullit, a former Dutch football player and manager. Team Liquid and Ruud Gullit had previously worked together during the 2024 Esports World Cup.

Websites

• TLnet – Originally called "Team Liquid," the tl.net website mainly covers StarCraft II but also includes some information about StarCraft Brood War, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Heroes of the Storm, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. After StarCraft II was released, TLnet became the largest online community for StarCraft players, with more than 220,000 active members and over twenty-four million total posts. The website has four full-time employees working in their New York City office.
• Team Liquid – A website that mainly covers news and events about the Team Liquid esports team.
• Liquipedia – A wiki run by volunteers that provides information about many esports, starting with StarCraft: Brood War and now covering more than 57 esports titles. In 2023, Liquipedia began covering traditional sports, including Formula 1. In 2024, Liquipedia will host the Dota 2 Wiki, which was previously on Fandom, with the goal of combining the esports wiki and game wiki into one complete Dota 2 wiki.

Tournaments and events

Team Liquid organizes community websites and teams, as well as various tournaments and events.

The TeamLiquid Starleague (TSL) has had two major versions, which were the largest StarCraft: Brood War tournaments outside of South Korea. The first TSL, sponsored by Razer in 2008, included many of the world’s top Brood War players and was very popular at the time. In 2009, the second TSL (TSL 2) had a prize pool of over $20,000 and remains the largest non-Korean Brood War tournament to date. After the release of StarCraft II, Team Liquid announced a third TSL, sponsored by PokerStrategy.com, with a prize pool of $34,700. This tournament took place from March to May 2011. A fourth version, TSL 4, was announced on April 25, 2012.

The TL Opens are one-day tournaments where players compete in a single-elimination format, alternating between North American and European battle.net servers. Eight TL Open events before TSL 3 also acted as qualifiers for the TSL.

On January 1, 2013, Team Liquid announced a series of online tournaments for international players of StarCraft: Brood War. These included:

• TL Attack: Inspired by a Korean TV show called Bnet Attack, this event features a professional player competing against non-professionals while interacting with hosts.
• Liquibition: A King-of-the-Hill mode where players compete in a best-of-7 game format.
• TL Arena: A professional player faces opponents with increasing challenges. For each win, the player receives new limitations on their gameplay options until they lose or achieve a set number of victories.

Esports history

The gaming clan "Liquid" was started by Victor "Nazgul" Goossens in late 2000, after he left his previous clan. Liquid began with four members and grew to eight players in the next year. Goossens chose each member carefully.

When StarCraft II was released, Team Liquid announced plans to become a professional esports team. Soon after, they received a sponsorship from The Little App Factory, which made them an official professional team. This allowed them to pay their players and send the team to tournaments worldwide. They created a new website for news on May 10, 2011, separate from their community site.

On August 13, 2012, three players traveled to Korea to live at the OGS training house and compete in GOMTV's Global StarCraft II League (GSL). Only one of the three, Dario "TLO" Wünsch, qualified for the first two GSL events. He was eliminated in the second and first rounds of those events.

The third GSL was Team Liquid's strongest performance so far. Three players—Hayder "Haypro" Hussein, Jos "Ret" de Kroon, and Jonathan "Jinro" Walsh—qualified for the main tournament. Hussein and de Kroon were eliminated in the first and second rounds, but Walsh reached the semifinals, where he lost 0–4 to the tournament winner, Jang "MC" Min-Chul.

In 2012, during GSL Season 2, members Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok and Yun "TaeJa" Young Seo reached the Round of 8 in the Code S tournament. TaeJa was eliminated, but HerO advanced to the semifinals.

At the end of 2023, Kim "Cure" Doh-wook and Clément "Clem" Desplanches reached the semifinals of ESL SC2 Masters: Winter 2023 Finals at Dreamhack Atlanta. Cure lost to Dark 3–1, while Clem defeated Serral 3–1 and reached the finals. In the grand final, Clem beat Dark 4–1.

At the start of 2024, Kim "Cure" Doh-wook was eliminated in the Round of 8 of Master's Coliseum 7, losing 3–4 to Solar.

In February 2024, Clément "Clem" Desplanches reached the Quarterfinals of IEM Katowice 2024 but lost 3–0 to Serral. Kim "Cure" Doh-wook reached the Semifinals of IEM Katowice 2024 but lost 3–0 to Maru.

Clément "Clem" Desplanches earned a direct spot in the Esports World Cup 2024 in Riyadh by winning SC2 Masters Winter 2023. Kim "Cure" Doh-wook earned a direct spot by reaching the top 4 at IEM Katowice 2024. Both players were eliminated in the Knockout Round 3 of ESL SC2 Masters: Spring 2024. Clem lost 3–0 to HerO, and Cure lost 3–2 to Shin.

In March 2014, Team Liquid added two Melee players: Ken, known as the "King of Smash," and KoreanDJ, who was the first to defeat Mew2King during his peak. After acquiring Curse Gaming, they signed Hungrybox, considered one of the "Five Gods of Melee," and Chillin, who defeated Ken during his prime. On August 11, 2015, they added Nairo, a top Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player who ended ZeRo's 56-tournament win streak. On September 28, 2015, KoreanDJ left the team and retired due to hand and wrist pain.

On January 6, 2015, Liquid acquired the League of Legends roster from Team Curse: Quas, IWillDominate, Voyboy, Cop, and Xpecial. The team finished 6th in the LCS Spring regular season with a 10–9 record. During Weeks 5 and 6 of the NA LCS, Piglet was benched and replaced by KEITHMCBRIEF. In the playoffs, they beat Counter Logic Gaming 3–0 but lost to Cloud9 3–2, finishing 3rd.

Team Liquid was very successful in 2018 and 2019, winning four LCS splits in a row. In the 2018 NA LCS season, their roster included Impact, Xmithie, Pobelter, Doublelift, and Olleh. At the 2018 League of Legends World Championship, they went 3–3 in groups and failed to advance. In the 2019 LCS season, they replaced Pobelter with Jensen and Olleh with CoreJJ. They again went 3–3 in groups at the 2019 World Championship and failed to advance. In 2020, Broxah joined as jungler, replacing Xmithie. The 2020 Spring Split was poor, with Liquid finishing 9th. Doublelift was benched and later traded to Team SoloMid, with Tactical promoted. Liquid finished 3rd in the summer split and made the 2020 World Championship but failed to advance. In 2021, Santorin replaced Broxah as jungler, and Alphari replaced Impact as top laner. They again went 3–3 in groups at the 2021 World Championship, losing a tiebreaker to Gen.G.

The 2022 season included a major roster change with the Honda sponsorship, forming a "super team" of Bwipo, Santorin, Bjergsen, Hans Sama, and CoreJJ. They finished third in the summer split but narrowly missed a Worlds slot, causing controversy. Hans Sama left the team, and Guilhoto was removed as head coach.

One week after merging with Curse, Liquid acquired a Counter Strike: Global Offensive team previously known as "Denial eSports."

On October 9, 2015, Liquid announced a return to Dota after a one-year absence. On October 21, 2016, they added a Dota team. On January 17, 2025, they announced a return to Overwatch 2 Esports.

In late 2023, Liquid returned to Apex Legends by signing the Legacy roster for the 2024 Apex Legends Global Series. The team includes Saul "YanYa" Ocampo, Luis Enrique "Neazul"

Sponsors

On January 24, 2015, it was announced that HTC became a sponsor of Team Liquid.

In June 2022, Team Liquid partnered with Honda as a title sponsor for their League of Legends team, and the team was renamed "Team Liquid Honda." On May 19, 2025, Team Liquid announced that their partnership with Honda had ended. This happened after Rainbow Six player Lucas "DiasLucasBr" Dias posted an image of an atomic bomb on X, referencing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, following a loss to Japanese team CAG Osaka. DiasLucasBr later deleted the post and apologized to members of CAG Osaka. However, American Honda Motor Company issued a statement ending the sponsorship, stating that the actions were not compatible with Honda’s corporate values and were unacceptable.

Management

Victor "Nazgul" Goossens is a founding member of Team Liquid and currently serves as a co-owner and chief executive officer. He first played in Brood War before helping to create Team Liquid.

Steve "LiQuiD112" Arhancet became part of Team Liquid's staff after Team Curse merged with Team Liquid. Following the merger, Steve took on the roles of co-owner and chief executive officer. His main responsibility is managing Team Liquid's League of Legends team.

Alienware Training Facility

In 2017, Team Liquid completed building its Alienware Training Facility in Los Angeles. This facility is used as a practice area for Team Liquid's CS:GO and League of Legends teams, and it also serves as their esports headquarters. The facility includes people who are not players, such as owner Steve "LiQuiD112" Arhancet and 1UP Studios, which is a studio that works for Team Liquid. This setup allows all parts of Team Liquid to work together. Alienware, Team Liquid's sponsor, provided all the computers for the Alienware Training Facility.