LOUD, a two-year-old esports team from Brazil, is absolutely killing it.
Esports teams might still lack the social clout of their traditional sporting counterparts, but they’re catching up fast. So finds the latest data from Twitter, which analyzed the rise and popularity of esports’ biggest teams during 2021.
While some of the world’s biggest and most established squads continued to exert their dominance in Twitter’s gaming sphere–which had a record-breaking year–newer outfits are challenging them, and at the rate they’re going, they could become tomorrow’s biggest players on social media.
In a beautiful example of nominative determinism, the most talked-about esports team among Twitter users in 2021 was LOUD, an upstart Brazilian outfit that only arrived on the scene in 2019.
Describing itself as “an esports organization and lifestyle company founded […] by content creators, developers, and digital marketing experts,” its expertise is clearly paying off–an aggressive social strategy has seen it grab over 1.3 million followers in just two years, helped by its squads in Free Fire, Fortnite, and League of Legends.
Los Angeles’ own FaZe Clan, which dominates this year’s line-up of esports organizations on Twitter, is a close second, while another Brazilian team, paiN Gaming, is third. The ever-social G2 Esports and Fnatic round out the top five.
LOUD once again leads the way with followers gained, and its success is rampant–despite being seven years younger than fifth-placed G2 Esports, it’s amassed just 100,000 followers shy of G2’s 1.4 million Twitter fans.
FaZe shows no signs of slowing down, and is now up to 5.7 million followers; Sentinels, the Las Vegas-based squad featuring the multi-championship-winning Bugha (Fortnite) and TenZ (VALORANT), has made the most of its top-tier talent to drive itself into the third spot.
Despite partnering with Adidas and announcing an all-out assault on the U.S., G2 Esports’ view count still falls behind number-one FaZe. 100 Thieves takes an unsurprising third place, while multi-discipline TSM FTX grabs fourth, and LOUD makes more noise in fifth.
McDonald’s was among FaZe Clan’s biggest new partnerships in 2021.
LOUD may find itself in the top five elsewhere, but its developing talent is still losing out to juggernauts from more established teams; Fortnite, despite losing traction on the wider competitive stage in the face of other mobile titles, still produces the most talked-about stars.
